The Girl Who Would Have Been
by Rulid
Summary: This is the story of Parvati Patil, thirty something, unmarried, disillusioned heavy smoker and Professor of Charms. Along with her a slew of other characters who were sidelined, stood askew and bunted into the fringe of Harry Potter history as a footnote. The setting is present day of 2014, and the forgotten kids are in their mid thirties.
1. Chapter 1:Parvati Patil

Disclaimer: I don't own Parvati Patil (and other Harry Potter characters)

This is a story about Parvati Patil, school teacher, unmarried, heavy smoker, disillusioned.

* * *

1. Years Later

It's sort of a rainy day. I would have liked had it been a torrent, but the weather was eking out raindrops like a petulant teenager, unsure of what she would be wearing for a date. Uncertain weather or not to do a charm, I fidget a while feeling the mist soak away all the warmth I had gathered within the Leaky Cauldron, and I give up making a choice and jolts myself out into the streets.

Wizards and witches live on the fringe of society. Hermione once said that for a society so fraught with beings of extradordinary powers, the wizarding world showed alarming signs of failure to thrive. I never caught on to what she was talking about back in school, but Hermione had always been more precocious than what Lavender and I fancied ourselves to be. Nowadays, you can't go by a day without reading about Hermione in the papers: The Secretary of this or that, the Representative of some vaguely familiar yet powerful body of government, the mover and shaker of the Minsitry of Magic. I think I last talked to her during our reunion dinner, and only briefly at that. She and I have always shared a vague neutrality that was inevitable for girls who shared the same room for seven years and not much else.

To my inquisitive relatives I am constantly bombarded by questions about the "Trio", the "Trinity", the "First Family" of the wizarding world. What was Harry Potter like when he was at school? I've run out of variations on how to relate the few hours Harry and I were "an item" at the Yule Ball back in '94. I'm not bitter that I was stood up by the "Boy Who Lived", and I wish him all the best. A morbid part of me anxiously wonders when he would start to loose his cool and descend into obscurity or crash into infamy, but that is a very, very small and shameful part that I immediately tuck away into dark corners. You can't live life like that, being just a side note in history.

I enter Flourish and Blotts, usually quiet at this time of year, the silence before the storm, the few weeks facing the beginning of the semester. Fay Dunbar is stacking books that some of the professors had marked up as the next year's text books. Fay used to be an Auror, something she was incessantly blabbering about all through her years at Hogwarts, but the less than apt Aurors that filled the ranks following the wizarding war was less glamorous and more taxing than someone attracted to its aspect of... "swashbuckling?" would deem. A lot of the young Aurors immediately dropped out and found other things to occupy their time with. Fay was one of the first of the diaspora, roaming from here to there with no particular interest catching her heart, eventually settling down like the dust on these text books she sold.

Fay Dunbar was a dull sort of girl in school, with damp and bored eyes. She would day dream endlessly about life outside the world. Mouthing her daydreams was what got her into trouble. She resembled her younger self now, with the same unkempt hair and an old maid's careless overalls with thick mittens to protect her from the paper cuts.

She notices my entrance, wipes her hands of the dust and climbs down the ladder. She has taken on some weight, but not much of a family. A lot of young folk died during those terrible years of the wizarding war. That's the part that not a lot of people read about in the histories. She was always very impressionable as a girl, and I never thought she'd end up selling books to youngsters. Then again, I didn't expect where I'd be as well.

"Parvati Patil," Fay sounds uncertain whether she wishes to be apprehensive or excited.

I flash a false smile that seems to reassure her as she drops her pretense and rushes over to hug me. _Bad choice, Parvati,_ I tell myself, _now you'll have to suffer through a bored old maid walk through memory lane_. I watch the clock tick a few seconds too much as Fay releases me and pulls me down to a makeshift tea table of stacked books.

"How've you been?" she squeals, "I've been wondering where you've been."

I let her lie pass over and return a warm smile.

"Here and there," I shrug.

"Last I heard," Fay is hesitant, "you broke up with Blaise Zabini."

I roll my eyes.

"Everyone seems to have been associated with Blaise Zabini at some point," I don't deny it, but the denial comes naturally with practice, "He's like the go-to-guy to match up with lonely girls."

Fay chortles out loud at this, spilling a bit of tea she was pouring on my skirt. I let it pass, despite the sting, as she seems to be oblivious of her mistake.

"At some point they even say he was an item with Ginny Weasley!" Fay adds her own gossip. Ginny Weasley is always on Fay's mind. If people think Hermione Granger as the unassailable paragon of excellence of our years, someone you could never hold a candle to, Ginny Weasley was the ultimate target of envy and jealousy. A seemingly down to earth girl, she was successful on her own, married well, and lives in opulence. The wet dream of any Hogwarts girl with low self esteem.

But, knowing Blaise, he would have liked it. He always had a thing for his damaged ego, and his pride would have swelled had people really thought that he had once been the possible man for a woman like Ginny.

"Anyway," I shrug, trying to end the conversation. I am at once terribly uncomfortable about bad mouthing an ex of mine with someone I barely talked to in school just for nostalgic gossip. I hand her my parchment I had prepared while drowning out the Ale at the Leaky Cauldron.

"What's this?" Fay accepts the scroll, tentatively, with apprehension of someone who's received too many unwelcome notices than the nerve could bare.

"Books I'll be needing," I try to smooth it over.

"'Elementary Charms'?" Fay mouths out loud.

It takes a while for Fay to sort it out.

It actually takes more than that, and I decide to supply her with the correct answer, as I didn't want to look like a show off.

"It's just a temporary position." I explain.

Fay's face is indeterminate, but soon settles for 'show of ecstatic joy for an old friend'. "By Merlin!"

I smile back, politely.

"Parvati Patil, Professor of Charms!" Fay tries to think of more things to say. If she had known me well enough back in the day, she would have said something that would likely be befitting. But all she could do was move her mouth about as if she were ecstatically overjoyed, while alternately repeating conflicting terms of "who would have known" and "I knew you'd make it".

"Professor Sprout contacted me just a few weeks ago," I explain, "Professor Flitwick was retiring, and he had gone through a list of names, before he recommended me."

That was an understatement. Naturally, Flitwick had to go through a couple of scrolls of names before he came up with mine. But Charms was one of the major academic fields, and those who naturally excelled in Charms excelled everywhere else. hence, most of those names on the top of the list were up in the world with more important things than teaching children.

"I had to go through a lot of names," the Professor had confessed as he looked at me up and down with his goblin like eyes.

"I know," I smiled back meekly, not wanting to hear the truth. I had been working as a lecturer at the Wizarding University, just to I could prepare for a real job with some added academic credentials. It was a tough job market in the wizarding world.

"And I mean A LOT!" the Professor had grown a bit cranky in his twilight years.

"I suppose so," my smile maintains the meek submissiveness of someone who can barely support herself and her cat.

"When your name came up, well..."

I wanted to pierce his beady little eyes with my fork, but the rent was coming up, and Hogwarts Professors had the best pension plan in the world.

"Let's just say that," Flitwick had savored my discomfort with such relish, the little Monster, "I thought P Patil was Padma."

No, despite what people thought, Padma wasn't the bright star of our family. Well, not always, and, more importantly, not in this particular instance for this particular subject - which was all that mattered at the time.

"I heard Sprout was recruiting Neville Longbottom from the Aurors," Fay whispered, sotto voce, as though we were in for some conspiracy.

"It was in the papers," I reply glumly, reflecting on how quickly the topic of conversation sped from Me to Neville in less than sixty seconds. "'_Star Auror steps down to pursue the passion of his life._'"

"I thought the passion of his life was Luna Lovegood," Fay giggles uncontrollably.

I see where this is going. Endless gossip of everyone until we're out of names to talk about. Should we get chummy over our nostalgia, she'll take me out for a drink, I'll overstep my self imposed limits, and I'll wake up on the floor of some stranger, again.

"Oh, my!" I look at the clock in surprise, despite having stared for it for the past few minutes. "Look at the time! Have to go, Fay."

Fay tries to say something, but I'm already out the door. A few more bookstores to visit before I visit Lavender and get my measurements. I want to be presentable. This may be something big! I try to quell the butterflies in my stomach. At least Lavender would have some memory actually tangible to share with.

* * *

Madame Lavender's faces into the main avenue of the string of shops that form Diagon Alley. The backside of Lavender's shop is the second hand robe shop run by her cousin, Kelly, and faces into Knockturn Alley. Lavender is one of our more successful alumni, other then the "Holy Trinity", and her shop rivals the Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. But while the WWW simply thrived too much until their primary rival Zonko withered out of existence, there were rumors that Lavender had expanded with quite a bit of aggression to take over Madame Malkin's business.

Lavender usually doesn't tell me much about these things. And since I went back to school she has drifted away, but still she remains my Bestie. I stub out my cigarette on the cobbled street and head into the shop.

It's amusing how Lav Lav and Ron Ron have shops facing each other. I don't think either of them have done it on purpose. It was just the best bit of realty on Diagon Alley. There was a brief rumor that Ron Weasley was secretly seeing Lavender behind his bossy wife's back, but that was rubbish. I doubt Lavender was as forgiving of men, as much as I doubt that anything of that magnitude would pass the scrutiny of Hermione's watchful eye. Then again, the rumors died a bit too quickly.

A wily elfin thing greets me at the door, looking me up and down, sizing me up.

I used to be proud of how I looked once, but the years have put on some weight and blemished the skin, and now I am nervous under the younger woman's stare, more aggravatingly curious how she would size me up than annoyed.

"May I help you, Madame?" the strumpet finally asks with a fake french accent. At least she doesn't chase me out in the rain, but I've been called a 'Madame', and I'm not sure if that is a vernacular of Madame Lavender's for "old woman" or "married woman", neither which is pleasing. The girl is still eyeing me through her heavy mascara, up and down, up and down, her slender wrist waving with slight impatience.

"I'm here to see Lavender," I return, haughtily.

"Yes," the girl smiles, but her eyes are humorless, "welcome to Madam Lavender's. I am Giselle. May I help you?"

'May I help you' sounds more impatient now.

"I'm a friend," I explain.

"Of course you are," Giselle's smile is still frozen and forbidding. A customer in the aisle waves her over and Giselle is gone before I know it.

I enter anyway. It's been a while since I've been to such a nice boutique. Once I used to hoard the Young Witch like crazy. Now I prefer very very loosely fitting robes. The customers here are generally more of the wealthier sort than young. Lavender has a young witches's shop down the alley where the more youthful now hang out. She has also taken over the actual magazine "Young Witches" as well.

Giselle is ignoring me too well to notice I'm making my way upstairs to the familiar rooms where Lavender started out as a designer for Madame Malkin's. I pass a barrier charm that still seems to work for me, Merlin bless dear Lavender. The corridors are more prohibiting, aptly for a busy workplace. I hear shouting and arguing from up ahead. No, not arguing, just shouting. It's Lavender's voice, and whoever she's shouting to doesn't respond in kind.

It would be impertinent to intrude. Looking back, maybe I should have rushed in. For the moment all I can say is that I was too overwhelmed by overachieving peers to dare lose the one single person who had been a true friend over the seven years at Hogwarts by trespassing on her good will.

"And now you bring me this rubbish?" Lavender was shrieking. "This outdated piece of rag? Ho, ho, you are so full of yourself. Did you think you could just traipse in here and ask a favor like that, just because we knew each other at Hogwarts?"

I cringed at that. I felt I was in that someone's shoes, being berated by Lavender Brown. Perhaps that's what those creme de la creme of Hogwarts looked down on us lowly wand wavers. I wondered if I should leave. Or perhaps I should have brought something, a present, a gift, anything to show my good will.

I fumble about my pocket, but all I find is my packet of cigarettes which I crave right now.

"Get out!" she screams. "Giselle!"

I hear Giselle's footsteps rushing up rapidly in the stairs.

"Giselle!"

I am stuck between Lavender and her lackey. I wish I could just shrivel up and die for the shame. If Giselle finds me here...

Giselle has already reached the top of the stairs. She gives me a foul glare, upturns her nose and marches past.

_I remember when we were young, Lav. Tentatively stepping into the small dormitory that was Griffindor Tower. You looked over us, Hermione and me, and you chose me to be your best friend, instinctively. _

_I remember how we would huddle up together and read the Young Witches, cutting out pictures and making scrap books. I remember how you scorned Hermione and asked me to join in. Sometimes I wonder what I would have been had I been more of Hermione's friend than yours. But then both you and Hermione went up in the world, walking your own separate paths. Where, now, is the brave Gryffindor Lion who was so proud she wore crimson than blue. Here I sulk about your doorway. _

_I will miss you._

Screaming.

It all happens so fast. Giselle, her short bangs fluttering, screams as she runs out of the room. Alarms ring about the building and the draperies that hang about the corridors slam down to form an iron curtain.

"Call the Aurors!" Giselle screams. "Call the Aurors!"

I try to move forward, anxious. The room is surprisingly breezy, and the wet cold wind flutters into the room. On the floor I see Lavender, beautiful and tall as ever, with a wisp of red hair dyed into her bleached blond. Her lips are red and continues to change hue with the light, and her lithe figure is draped by an exquisite Hypogriff feathered robe.

Why is she on the floor? I rush over, fear clutching my heart.

"Lav?"


	2. Chapter 2: Blaise Zabini

Disclaimer: I don't own Parvati Patil (and other Harry Potter characters)

This is a story about Parvati Patil, school teacher, unmarried, heavy smoker, disillusioned.

* * *

2. The Healer is In

It was one of the younger breed of Aurors who kept me like a suspect, bound and kneeling beside my still warm friend.

After the rush of young Aurors of our generation became disillusioned with society, including the likes of Fay Dunbar and Ron Weasley, young and anxious folks who were used to participating in the Wizarding War all their life and thought that was what they were best at, the new generation of Aurors, having no Dark Lord to chase after, nor had the temperament to do so, expanded in the rank of wizards until they became a policing force of the magical community.

While some of these ranks were filled with bright Aurors like our heroes of the past, most of them were much more at home with the complacent day to day humdrum of life after You-Know-Who. Thanks to Hermione's efforts in the Ministry, a lot of elfs, centaurs and goblins also joined the Auror Force, creating new friction within the community. This one who kept me bound for interrogation was a wet behind the years youngster, but with all the snobbishness of an anti-non-human zealot as a Death Eater of old. To think that I, who once fought in Dumbledore's Army, was being interrogated for crimes against society by a Neo-Death Eater sent shivers down my spine.

Did we really win the Wizarding War?

And who are "We"? If "We" encompasses Hermione Granger and Parvati Patil, how homogeneous is that group?

Gratefully, someone higher than this Auror enters, in the form of Seamus Finnigan.

Seamus has grown fat, though a lot of the body mass can also be traced to his enormous arms. He was never quite tall, but he certainly did expand in girth, and his entrance was abrupt and swaggering as his youthful self. He immediately smacked the young Auror on the back of his head.

"Get her off those bounds, ye frickin lunatic." Seamus snarls.

Giselle, who had been sobbing in the corner uncontrollably, shakes up to complain, but the young Auror complies without a word.

"And take that broad down stairs," Seamus orders, pointing at Giselle, "I can't even hear meself think, for Dumbledore's beard!"

"Sir," the young Auror protests, "I have to make note that the suspect was found at the scene of the-"

The young man couldn't finish his sentence, yet all Seamus did was give him his full and unadulterated attention. The man gulped audibly.

"Scram," Seamus whispered hoarsely.

The two were out of the room as though they apparated. Seamus swung his large jaw back to my direction with a jowly smile.

"How've you been, Pav?" he helps me up into a chair, while he casually takes in the scene of the crime with darting small eyes, never actually looking at me.

"I've been fine," I manage to be compliant. I am shaking up inside. My mind is still blank, and I don't think it's fully gotten through me that my Lavender might be dead.

"Hear you're heading to Hogwarts," Seamus smiles, massaging my aching arm where the magical bonds had bit into the skin.

I sip the tea that Seamus offers me. "Looks so. I see you're still in the Force."

Seamus shrugs. "Me and Dean. I think we're all that's left of the old crew."

I offer a wan smile, as he touches upon what's been on my mind all day. "You know, I ran into Fay Dunbar just on my way here."

I shake my head in bemusement, not being able to believe that the boring chat with Fay and Lavender's death just happened within an hour of each other.

Seamus's hand suddenly grabs mine. I am startled, but I see that my hand has been rattling so bad that all the tea had spilled on the floor. He removes the tea from my hand.

"I'm sorry," Seamus offers; with the whole weight of sincerity he brings forth reality crashing about around me. I burst into an uncontrollable wail, as Seamus collects me in his arms, patting me gently like a small child.

"Oh, Merlin! Why." I don't think I am the one crying, but I hear myself as though detached.

"I'm sorry," Seamus continues, as my mind darkens into a frenetic chaos.

* * *

"She looks alright," the cold voice is so familiar, and splashes me to consciousness. "Just hand her a cigarette and she'll be fine."

I know that voice all too well, but I refuse to open my eyes. I suppose I'm in some sort of infirmary. I must have passed out after crying my head off into Seamus.

"Did you even examine her?" I hear Seamus snarl in an angry voice. He seems to be angry all the time. Rumor has it that he's having trouble at home. I had been to Susan and Seamus's wedding, and wasn't sure back then since Susan was always a bit on the pudgy side, but it turned out that they rushed the wedding because Seamus had gotten her pregnant. It was a crazy time back then, post Voldemort. While Susan became Judge Bones, Seamus remained Seamus, and some suspected that still he was closer to Dean than Susan. I don't think they live in the same house, now. Or at least, some say that Seamus returns home when Susan goes off to work. Anyway, he's always angry.

"I don't have to examine her to know that she's alive and sleeping off a vasovagal syncope brought on by emotional stress," Oh how I hate him. He prods me, "Wake up."

He pinches the sole of my bare feet. My eyes flash open in a glare.

"I'm awake, dammit," I snap at him.

Blaise Zabini looks at me coolly, his arms crossed over his white lab coat. He's grown a goatee since we broke up, whence at the time he had threatened with a stubble. He had gone on and one with a limping emotional neediness when I began breaking up with him, and to see it crystallize into a pretentious stubble was too much.

"See?" Blaise looks at me with a disdainful scowl.

Seamus grunts in exasperation and turns to me to squeeze my arm.

"Take care of yourself, okay?" Seamus grins and plants a kiss on my forehead, "I promise I'll bring you up to speed with anything that turns up on Lavender's case."

"Yes, yes," Blaise ignores him in a sing-song voice, "Go Gryffindor!"

Seamus ignores him and briskly turns to leave. I want Seamus to stay, or at least take me with him. But I can barely reach out before my head spins again. Seeing my weakness, Blaise promptly stick one of my cigarettes in my mouth and lights it up for me.

I inhale deeply. I needed that. I want to deny for all the Galleons in the world, but I needed that, and Blaise knew it.

"What sort of fucking Healer are you?" I snap, though not ungrateful for the cigarette.

Blaise ignores me again, instead lights one up for himself. I look around me and I see we're in his private practice office on Diagon Alley. While he does put in some time at St. Mungo's Blaise takes a couple of days off to see private cases here. But I know that it's mostly where he keeps his stash of pain-killers from plain view.

"Sorry about Lav." Blaise says, his glassy grey eyes show no sign of emotion. It's less insulting that he doesn't fake the emotion he lacks.

I push Lav's memory away for a moment, and I'm ashamed to say that it goes away easily. Perhaps it was because of our falling out in recent years, but Lavender's death flutters away from my mind with the wisp of smoke I exhale.

"I hear you're going to Hogwarts," Blaise offers small talk. I ignore him, this time, inhaling deeply. "Class of '98 gathering again. Interesting."

"Gathering?" I snort, "Seamus and you on Lav's death is barely a gathering."

Blaise snorts disdainfully. "Neville Longbottom has resigned as Chief Judicator of the Aurors and enters as the successor to Professor Sprout's chair."

I glare at him silently, but am inwardly intrigued. Such is the reason that I had fallen for such an anti-social misanthropic jerk like Blaise and spent the past couple of years with him until Lavender shook some sense into me.

"Do you know that those Neo-Death Eaters are on the rise?" Blaise examined his fingernails. "They flock like flies to a shit pile. And though we cannot see the shit pile, they are certainly flocking from somewhere."

"Neville?" I scrunch my nose.

"Don't be daft," Blaise snaps, irritated that I'm not following. "Neville was a senior Auror. Suddenly he resigns and comes to Hogwarts. There are anti-non-human leagues springing up around the country. Hermione Granger weaves about the Ministry, taking appointments that suit her needs as though she were swatting away some unseen terror. There is a dark storm brewing, Parvati."

I feel the blood draining from my fingers. My fists bunch up. "What.."

"Why did Neville return to Hogwarts?" Blaise crossed his arms.

Suddenly the prospect of returning to my old stomping grounds seemed less glamorous. Perhaps there was a reason Flitwick couldn't find a replacement Charms teacher.

"Fuck," I spat, stubbing my cigarette in one of his pus pans. "Why do you care, Blaise? You're Slytherin."

Blaise scowls a moment, but decides to go on full angry on me.

"Don't you dare assume I'm one of those moronic Neo-Death Eaters," he flares up. "I never fell in line with the likes of Draco Malfoy, and I still don't approve of such nonsense. You should know better."

To tell you the truth, I'm not much of a proud Gryffindor. Blaise is right. At school he was a Slytherin all apart to himself. having lived with him the past few years, I should have at least granted him the courtesy of acknowledging as much.

"Sorry," I muffle.

"Shit, Parvati," Blaise scowls. "You were always a bit daft. You never change. See your way out."

He turns away and stalks off into his drug cabinet. He had been off the pain killers for some time. I guess I feel guilt. I helped him out of his drug habit back then, and seeing him just fall back on those potions so easily is heartbreaking.


	3. Chapter 3: Padma Patil

Disclaimer: I don't own Parvati Patil (and other Harry Potter characters)

This is a story about Parvati Patil, school teacher, unmarried, heavy smoker, disillusioned.

* * *

3. Welcome to Hogwarts

The train to Hogwarts comes in with a rush, and though I have already been at Hogwarts for the past few weeks, preparing classes, it seems customary for new professors to ride in on the train with the children. On one hand it's a stupid tradition, borne from a time when the Magical community was small and simple, and the position of Hogwarts professor was as open as anyone willing to teach for the sake of teaching. The new teacher would ride along with all his belongings, preparing classes on the fly, interacting with his pupils and learning along the way.

Nowadays, with the shrinking job market and a slowing economy, Hogwarts professors have to report in early to the Headmistress, and then go all the way back to King's crossing and then take the train back with the children.

My family saw me off from the platform. It was like when I was little. All twenty three Patils, cousins, uncles, Nana, dad and mom and Padma and Roger and their three adorable angels all came to see me off. Nana was adamant that we all come.

"Professor of Hogwarts!" Nana is squealing and clapping her hands and shouting out loud lest some of the children miss that small detail, to which everyone naturally seemed either oblivious or ignoring because they were saying their own goodbyes. I really want to smoke somewhere, alone and private. Perhaps I can find an empty stall on the Hogwarts express.

Roger Davies works for the Weasleys. Not necessarily George and Ron's WWW, but for the Patriarch Mister Weasley, Mister Weasley's Modified Muggle Appliances. After the wizarding war there was a soar in interest for all things Muggle. Mister Weasley's experiments on charming Muggle objects hit it big, and not before long, every Wizard and Witch wanted something Muggle. The Ministry also lent a hand, opening up Muggle-Magical relations, allowing a steady but watchful trade and commerce. The Weasley name was gold, these days, with daughter in law who practically ran the Ministry on her own and a son in law who was the Boy-Who-Lived. The Patils themselves rode to King's crossing in a one of his vehicles, dressing up as one of the Muggles, something old grandpa Patil would never have deigned to do. Roger was a Vice President at the Weasley International and worked directly for Bill, and ran occasional errands to George and Ron's little business. Right now he was on the phone with George's secretary.

Padma came over and amicably pinched my cheek.

"Smile for the family, idiot," Padma hisses through gritted teeth.

She is my twin, and she is the furthest thing from me in the world.

I smile. I kiss Nana and Mom and Dad and my nephews and niece. And I even try to make an effort to kiss Padma, but she holds me at arm's length.

"Let's not push it," Padma smiles sweetly.

They say that the Albus Potter and Rose Weasley would be attending Hogwarts in a couple of years. It was the gossip of the world, and no one would stop shutting up about it. But knowing Harry, he'd probably conjure up a refined and retracted way to not come into the spotlight.

"If you get chased out of school after your first year, I'll kill you," Padma adds.

I would like to retort, but my will to get away from her is greater.

"Yeah, sure, fine," I mutter, fumbling for the cigarettes in my pocket. Roger is still on the phone with the Weasley secretary. "Bye, Roger."

He doesn't hear me, or is ignoring me. No one's supposed to intrude Roger when he's doing important things. I feel rebellious; I walk up to Roger and wave at him in front of his face. He offers a curt smile and turns away let my waving would interfere with his Enchanted Muggle Phone.

"I said, 'Bye, Roger'," I shout at him. Roger shoots an annoyed look at Padma, as if to say 'do you mind putting down your rabid sister?'.

Padma rushes forward and drags me away. A few more steps and she's shoved me onto the train. The family is ashamed of me and Dad tries to apologise to Roger, but Padma shoos Dad away as well.

Disgusted, I board the train.

No, this wasn't the Hogwarts of my youth. This was Hogwarts grown up with me, where the children of Goblins dream to attend sometimes, and where Centaurs are no longer 'Magical Creatures', but works as patrolmen and foresters. The Trolley now has sweets with familiar names, but with odd Runes beside them that represents not much magic but more of things like 'Limited', 'Incorporated', and 'Trademark'. Chocolate Frogs now have nutrition information, and recommended daily helpings, but the Frogs themselves don't jump about as they used to, and rather limp once in a while.

I find an empty stall and place my small bag on my lap, pulling my cowl about my head and hoping to sleep. But, alas, the children are inquisitive, and at first a shy girl enters, and then her friend, and then a flock. Soon, I am surrounded by bustling children.

"Are you a teacher?" one of the girls ask.

I wan't to say 'no', so they'd leave me alone, so I can find an empty stall and smoke, and then the stench of my cigarettes wouldn't matter. But then I can't lie to them. I'm not much of a 'moral' person, but since I'm now a "professor of Hogwarts" I want to do something about my life. Maybe I should stop smoking.

The thought is ludicrous, so I laugh out loud. But the girl asked a question, and it comes off as though I am utterly pleased and fascinated by children when I reply, "Oh, yes, I am."

"What do you teach?" another one asks.

"You'll see," I smile. I read somewhere that children like mysteries.

But their face droops a little.

"Are you a DADA teacher?" one of them asks, looking slightly enthusiastic. "DADA teachers are cursed!"

"Really?" I smile. Michael Corner's been teaching DADA for years without incident. Padma had been a close friend of Michael and said that the Ministry of Magical Education was cutting his funds and decreasing his classes until last year they decided to combine his curriculum with History of Magic.

"They say that an ancient Slytherin curse is on the DADA class," the first girl chirps.

"Don't be silly," an older girl snaps. She's a second year student, wearing Green. "There's no such curse. DADA is just boring and there's simply nothing to learn."

"I think I'll kill myself if I get sorted into Slytherin."

"I'm going to cut off all my hair if I get sorted into Slytherin."

"They say that Slytherins live in a dungeon!"

"I want to be sorted into Gryffindor, just like Ginny Weasley!"

"Where did you get sorted, ma'am?" the first girl asks.

"Where do you think?" I am trying to do this new thing; being a responsible adult. It's a bit difficult but the train hasn't even pulled out of London, yet. Merlin, I want to smoke.

"I think you're-" but the girl is cut short.

"She's obviously Slytherin," another girl giggles. "she would have said otherwise."

The older Slytherin girl looks angry, but keeps silent. Another round of anti-Slytherin sentiment erupts.

I look about the children and there is a weird feeling that stirs in me. I see my childhood self there, it could be this one or that, chatting with Lavender, talking badly about someone or another without much thought. No, I was not the Slytherin girl. I was not the shy one next to me.

* * *

Hagrid is out to greet us, as he has been doing all his life. He still lives in the hut, and despite his hero status, he is one of the few people who has always been a down to earth person. Compared to him, even the saintly Potter seems fickle. Hagrid opens his arms to each and every one of the children. I spot Neville Longbottom up among the throng of children. Hagrid opens his arms, and Neville embraces him in return, as if he was still a shy boy.

I had never been particularly friendly with Hagrid. He had always been a confidante of the Trio. Hagrid opens his arms, and I stare up at the half-giant.

I was never one for hugging. "Hey, Hagrid."

Hagrid winks back at me. "Hey, Parvati. Welcome back."

Hagrid closes his arms and I walk with him at the rear.

"You don't have to walk me to the Carriage, Hagrid," I shrug, "Neville looks anxious to talk with you."

Hagrid spots Neville, but not without putting on a pair of glasses. "Heh, looks like he does. But I'd rather talk with you, Parvati."

"Always one for the underdog, Hagrid?" The night is cold.

"Sorry about Lavender," Hagrid mumbles.

Yeah, Lavender pokes in my mind once in a while. Sometimes as the hyperactive young girl with an infectious taste for gossip, sometimes as the hyperactive woman with an infectious taste for fashion. She embodied the Young Witch of this generation, and with her death I feel more than just empty about a lost friend. Sometimes I feel that what little optimism I had about those like myself left behind hung on my own personal hero.

Who could have killed her?

Seamus, despite his promise, avoided me since the incidence. I'm not sure it's because he has nothing, or because there's something else about.

* * *

"This year we have two new professors joining the faculty," Madame Sprout had been the headmistress since McGonnagal stepped down last year to retire to the countryside. I hear that her star pupil, Hermione, goes out of her way to visit her on her birthdays and Christmas. To fill in for Hufflepuff's head of house, Sybil stepped in. Sybil clasps my hand warmly and smiles at me through her thick spectacles that have grown thicker. At least I have one good friend left in the world.

"Professor Neville Longbottom," Sprout beams at her favourite as Neville stands up from his seat, greeted with rancorous applause.

The children all know Neville. There's a statue of Neville in his home town, holding the sword of Gryffindor over Nagini. There was a play written about Neville slaying a Dragon. I don't think the Association on Magical Animal Rights looked kindly on that play.

"He is a famous Auror," Sprout continues Neville's introduction, forcing him to stand up again with a shy smile, "and a brave warrior who slew You-Know-Who's demon snake. He's returned to Hogwarts for his great love of Herbology! Everyone give a hand to our handsome proud son!"

For a moment Neville was probably more revered than even Harry.

"And for Charms," I stand up, "Professor Flitwick will not be returning this year."

I hang there for a moment, wondering how my own introduction would go.

"He's come down with a dreadful cold," Sprout continues, and I hang there, not being able to stand up or sit down. "I hope that all of us could join in wishing our dear Professor Flitwick to return to health."

I hear a couple of giggles from the girls who sat with me on the train, now sitting up front.

"To fill in, Professor Padma Patil has joined us," Sprout proclaims. I think she did that on purpose.


	4. Chapter 4: Pomona Sprout

Disclaimer: I don't own Parvati Patil... (which sounds weird) Nor do I own Harry Potter and its associated characters.

Summary: Parvati is in her mid thirties, unmarried (extremely late for Witch standards), broken up with Blaise Zabini, used to work for Slughorn at the Wizarding University, now appointed to Charms teacher at Hogwarts. Who would have known? Maybe things are looking up? Then Lavender dies.

* * *

4. What the hell am I doing here?

When you're in Hogwarts you think that later in life you'll amount to something great. You're eleven, or ten for some, and starting out like a chick creeping from her mother's wings, eagerly blaring at the world, noticing for the first time that you have wings.

For some, especially the Muggle-born, this came with awe and wonder at everything. In some bad cases it would lead to megalomania, while equally bad on the other side of the spectrum, you would find a girl withered away and shy, deciding she would not use magic for the rest of her life. While those born of wizarding families tended to have a better retention of their members from falling out of magic, this was not always the case. Wizard born were also at risk of being born a Squib. But more importantly, wizard born were also at equal risk to get disillusioned of the world as any child.

If there's anything that I plan to do when I say I'm "going to be a responsible adult", it was generally in this vein of thought. The last thing on my mind is to make favourites, curry favors, and let the children feel that their destiny has been set at birth. No, Harry, we are not all born with a great big chip on our shoulders. And I suppose that while some of our classmates scorned you for your flamboyant adventures that you wailed about that you had not brought it upon yourself, others live their lives in mediocre dullness that pervades every facet of society.

If there's one thing I plan to do, I am not going to leave anyone behind.

"Miss Patil!"

Someone calling my name. Oh, right. I'm in Sprout's office.

"Oh, yes," I smile brightly. A few years working under Slughorn makes you force all sorts of fake smiles.

"I was telling Neville and yourself how the OWLs are important this year," Sprout is showing pretense of patience. This is not good. "The Ministry is considering setting up a new school up North, an international school with the help of our sister schools; we aim to pool our resources in this sordid economy to give some much needed vigor to the new generation."

"Of course, Ma'am," Neville has become quite the charm. He had been really stumpy as a boy. The least of the Gryffindor Five. That's what Lavender and I called them, ranking them each quarter. It was usually Dean or Harry at the top of the list with Neville or Ron at the bottom. But now with Seamus and Dean working the beat, I would place him on par with Ron and just behind Harry. He may be not as rich as Ron, but he certainly has the calm and dependable gravitas of a true Stud-

"Miss Patil!" Sprout pulls me out of my wool gathering again.

"OWLs!" I gasp. What was she talking about? Oh, yes. OWLs are important... because... International School. Damn.

The International school was another sign of how the Wizarding world, after centuries of seclusion, was emulating its Muggle counterpart. Once there was no need for all this talk of "efficiency" and "economy" and "aptitude". Even the poorest witch could eke out her existence in relative comfort, because Magic. But now with the influx of such effluence that required more and more high precision magic, magical commerce was becoming a thing of the next generation, with magical corporations hogging secrets to their product's manufacture. Magical corporations like the Weasley's and the Malfoy's have become the household name. While during my generation children dreamed of opening a joke shop, or traveling around the world to find mystical creatures, now they dream of taking on a steady job working for the Weasleys or getting a government appointment like becoming an Auror.

And why I'm here, of course. A professorship at Hogwarts. Who am I to complain?

"I want you to work extra hard on getting those OWLs up," Sprout demands. "Make sure that we raise our GPA, but more importantly I want significant Star Pupils applicable to the annual Tri-Wizard."

That's another thing. The Tri-Wizard. Once a grand event that marked a celebration of cooperation, now became an annual competition between schools where dozens of students competed for moderately achievable goals, and where Malfoy P & C and Weasley Muggleware competed to place a billboard on the sidelines.

"We're still a few years off for Albus Potter and Rose Weasley to join our ranks, but I'm sure that as friends of The-One-Who-Lived you would be well suited in molding the students into competent allies for these bright leaders of the future."

I vomit a little in my mouth.

Neville give off a small cough, reminding Sprout about something or another. "Professor, since Parvati's here, I want to discuss-"

"Do you think that's wise, Neville?" Sprout peers over her glasses at Neville. Then, as though making a 'decision' she turns to me, "You may leave us, Miss Patil."

Neville tries to say something, but I don't have time for his high minded designs even if it were offered on a silver platter. They can go make their grand schemes and designs all they want. I was going to see my Students.

* * *

I think I recognize a name or two from the sheet, but most of them are generally unfamiliar.

There is only one girl who garners all the attention in this school, and that is Victoire Weasley. It is impossible to miss her, being the first grandchild of the wealthiest wizard, and a daughter of the most beautiful witch I feel that my eyes are sucked towards her. I try not to stare.

Of course, I've met Victoire before, but I doubt she remembers me. She had posed for Teen Witch a few years ago when Blaise and I were still a thing, and Lavender invited us to a dinner party. None of the Weasley clan were there, but Victoire was scheduled for an appearance. Lee Jordan wanted to do a movie with her as his star, but despite his begging and pleading Bill said no. And Victoire had been then, and even now, modest, well mannered, highly gifted, bright, beautiful and popular as ever.

She looks at me respectfully, pertinent and calm. There is no know-it-all air, no haughtiness, no scorn about her lips. She is simply a student here, and she seems to mock my own apprehension.

"Welcome to Charms," I begin. There is no fanciful display of the Lockheart, no gravitas of Snape, no strictness of McGonagall. I am inviting everyone to come along. "I am Parvati Patil, and I will be leading you fifth year students through your OWLs this year."

At the mention of OWLs, a boy, whom I've memorized as Dave Wood, Oliver's boy, raised his hand.

"Professor," he looks handsome as his old man, but has a keener glint in his eyes. "I'm not aiming to get high marks on my OWLs. I have tryouts for the Manchester United wizarding junior branch this year. So, my trainer says that I need the extra time for practice as much as I can manage."

My smile remains fixed on my face. To deny him would embroil me in a lawsuit with Oliver Wood. Then again, I had a pep talk with Sprout this morning.

"We'll see what we can do-"

"I'm not being disrespectful, Professor," Dave interjects, "but I do have training, today."

"I'm sure if you put your time and effort any day of the-"

"My trainer's invited Victor Krum to give me pointers today, ma'am." I can see he's trying to be as polite as his eager young mind could possibly manage. "I have to be on the field by noon. I just wanted to tell you without being absent from class, ma'am."

With Dave gone, the class proceeds haphazardly. I had prepared a whole bunch of material for the students but it comes out in the wrong order.

"How is transfiguration different from charms?" I begin, but the students are impatient. They have already sized up their professor and I feel their lack of confidence in me slipping away rapidly.

I know it's basic Charms 101, but it's fundamental and important. Before I begin my rant of why Charms in important, Victoire raises her hand. I brought this one on myself, since I've opened it with a question.

"Transfiguration changes what is, charms changes what it does, Professor," Victoire is patient but her choice of words are brief in extreme.

"Yes, Victoire," I reply, trying to work that into my lecture, "that is the crux of it. Transfiguration-"

"Don't we get points, Professor?" a girl in the back, one Ginny Randall - Neil's daughter, I suppose, they've all begun taking names of the Trio - speaks up.

I got an earful on the points system from Sprout, the other day. Hand them out often, but not in large amounts, and by a sufficiently objective standard or I'll be hearing complaints from the parents.

"Two points for Gryffindor-" I try to smile.

"Girls or boys, ma'am?" Ginny Randall looks upset.

"Does it matter?" I immediately retort, but I regret it.

"Girls and boys are marked separately, Professor," Victoire tries to explain in a calm and patronizing tone, "at the end of the year, the House Banner may go to the house with the highest points, but we also receive a percentage boost in our Student Evaluation based on House and Dorm, ma'am."

I think I read about something like that a while ago, or perhaps it was one of the lengthy laundry list of instruction from Sprout.

I take a deep breath.

"This is for the House," I recover my composure. I am the teacher here. No, I am not going to resent the children for being children. Despite their calm and knowing demeanor, they are still students learning of the world. "What is the importance of a House, Ginny?"

"We are graded by the house, Professor," Ginny seems exasperated. She is so different from her namesake. Then again, half the boys are named as some variation of Harry.

"It's not about the Grades, Ginny. It tries to foster a person's inner character by surrounding one with those who would encourage those traits. All traits of the four houses are important. And to be a member of a house, means that the sorting hat has seen that it is important that a certain aspect of you grows to help you with your life. Your house members are your closest of friends-"

"It's not like you're close with the Weasley family, Professor Patil," Ginny is on full confrontational mode, I see.

"Ten points deducted from Gryffindor." I smile back, and add with a wink, "Girls only.'

* * *

The other Professors are huddled around Neville during lunch, though he does send a few furtive glances my way. I have to admit, I did suspect he had a thing for me when we were in school. Old flames are fickle and volatile. I ignore him and sit at the end of the table with Sybil.

"I heard you deducted a ten from Gryffindor," Sybil smiles as she settles down. She orders a Madame Spinnet's diet special. The food at the dining hall has changed to become 'optimized' to a student's needs. Alicia Spinnet went into the culinary business after her elbow injury and made headlines with how Hogwarts was 'poisoning' the students with unhealthy meals.

Now everything tastes like paper.

I shrug.

"Ten is big, Parvati," Sybil smiles, waving her arms before me. "I foresee a future in which you will be plagued by a flock of angry Gryffindor parents."

Sybil has found some humor in her later years, mostly making fun of herself.

"What's up with Neville?" The professors weren't eating much, which was understandable, but everyone was teeming in on what Neville had to say.

"Oh," Sybil frowns dismissively, "he says that there is some Dark Danger brewing in the underbelly of the Magical community. Something to do with the recent vandalism by the Neo-Death Eaters."

"But you're not buying it?' I grin, expectantly.

"If there was a new Dark Lord for the new Death Eaters, I would have predicted it," she shrugs.

Somehow that is not very reassuring.

* * *

Marauder's Maps are one thing that remains forbidden in Hogwarts to this day. Except to the faculty.

For the faculty, the WWW (no one seems to call them by their full name of Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes, anymore) has provided a highly advanced Marauder's Map XP for School and Academia, which color codes students, based on highly advanced rune algorithms. Sometimes it gets glitches and crashes into a Blue Mist of Death, but shaking it vigorously often works wonders.

Right now, I am creeping out of the School grounds for a well needed R&R.

Of course, as a faculty I can leave whenever I'm not on Night duty. But I just couldn't bare people seeing me smoke. So I eschew the common pubs, and find the spare key that Blaise gave me long ago.

His private offices are empty, but I see that Blaise has been here recently for a 'fix' as he calls it. He injects himself with Redoxomine, which calms the nerves and helps you go to sleep. I once told him that I would never use a Malfoy product, but he laughed and told me that Malfoys, unlike the Weasleys, never use their own name on their brands. They own several subsidiary Potions and Charms companies each bearing their own label, but are essentially all Draco's. Without my knowing, I was probably Malfoy's biggest customer just by smoking his cigarettes.

We sort of got each other out of our respective bad habits, back then. I nagged at him until he quit 'fixing himelf up', while he constantly charmed my cigarettes that they reeked of foulness beyond shit.

Then all hell broke loose. There never really is a happily ever after for the likes of us, is there?


	5. Chapter 5: Hanna Abbot

Disclaimer: I don't own Parvati Patil. Harry Potter characters are the IP of JK Rowling, Scholastic and WB, and I am writing fanfiction based on the tenets of fair use, namely non profit, does not detract from JKR's income, and does not copy or attempt to substitute for the original work, etc. Furthermore, Rowling has stated through her Lawyers in the non-case that did not take place against George Lippert that she is cool (paraphrasing) with on-line spin-offs as long as it is made clear she is not involved. Furthermore, no pornography or racism. For in depth study on Harry Potter Fan fiction and other derivatives, I point you to "The Harry Potter Lexicon and the World of Fandom: Fan Fiction, Outsider Works, and Copyright", Schwabach A. University of Pittsburgh Law Review, 2009; 70.

* * *

5 The Leaky

I am trudging back to Hogwarts, in slippers, cloaked. Small jagged pebbles playfully prick my soles before they scatter off back to the cobblestones. Not far off is the Leaky Cauldron, my favorite stomping grounds. There resides my next best friend, Hannah Abbot.

Hannah is the anti-Lavender. And, no, the anti-Lavender is not Hermione Granger. Hannah is a free spirit sort of girl. She never was a prominent student back in school, more quiet despite being pretty awesome - as it turns out. Now since she left Hogwarts, her laid-back nature now bloomed to its fullest.

Hannah succeeded Old Tom as the landlady of the Leaky Cauldron. I keep on referring to it by its old name, but now it's simply "the Leaky". She's turned the previously run down inn-slash-pub into a cozy hangout for our sort of people. If she just didn't enforce the no-smoking policy, I wouldn't have had to break into my ex-boyfriend's clinic.

It's a cozy autumn night, and I see a small gathering of people, mostly clerks who work at the shop stopping by for a beer. Hannah has taken the stage and is poking out a song from her guitar. She has long dirty blond hair that hangs about and loosely fitting clothes that seem to just fit right. I enter quietly, taking a beer from Dennis Creevey and snuggle in, relaxing away.

It's too dark to see anyone else, but I think it's Katie Bell by the window, and Fay Dunbar near the stage. Katie used to be a trio of older girls, including Alicia Spinnet and Angelina Johnson. Alicia went on to become a star Quidditch player before culminating injuries got the better of her, and turning her into this weird Witch Fitness and Workout guru. Angelina, of course, married George Weasley and disappeared from public view. But Katie... Katie was plagued with bad luck from early on. During her Hogwarts years she was one of the most frequently injured of the Gryffindor team, and then there was the debacle about the cursed jewelry. Bad luck seemed to follow Katie Bell around that in the end she just seemed to give up on life. Blaise was the one who alerted me that Katie was a real mess, when she came to him with severe withdrawal from various substance abuses. I was appalled at first, but girls like Katie were becoming more and more common.

And no, it doesn't seem to be Katie Bell.

I'm not sure now, whether Hermione Granger is doing the right thing. Muggles, despite what You-Know-Who thought, weren't quite the haplessly powerless sheep we had thought they were. They were more vicious and virile and oft times cannibalistic in their nature of dominating their own kind. Sometimes I think that there was a sound reason why the wizarding world was segregated from the Muggles, and why throughout our history we are so fraught with these constant push and shoves of pureblood against mixed heritage. But Hermione Granger is relentless, and her fight to make all things sensible is, well, sensible. The problem, dear Hermione, is that not everyone is as sensible as you are. Sometimes there isn't a logical answer to things.

Hannah is playing one of her new songs. It's not catchy, and its awfully wordy for a song. You can tell she places extra care to her lyrics. The audience is mesmerized, though, mostly because we flock here to what we like. Nostalgia, for the most part, of the time that went by so quickly that we so utterly failed to appreciate. Not all of us are precocious prodigies like Hermione Granger, or "chosen" like Harry Potter. Some of us fall off the band wagon along the way, and the story goes on while leaving us in the dust.

Hannah finishes her song and with a deep bow, flirtatiously flicks her wand.

"Lumos!" she grins, "Gotta forgive me, folks. But I'm through with my new songs for tonight."

The applause sounds broken, but there are only five or six of us, and we're giving it heartily. Hannah hops off the stage and catches a glass of beer that Dennis slides her way before making a straight beeline over to ... moi! I am enthralled.

"Parvati!" Hannah leans over to kiss me on the cheek. "I heard you were back in town."

"Hey," I am overcome with warmth and fuzziness as I massage her fingers, "beautiful song."

Hannah rolls her eyes. "I cleaned out your old room that you used back when."

"That's okay. I think I'll just stay full time at the castle." I am trying to abstain from coming into easy reach of Blaise's little hideout. My return to Hogsmeade was too tantalizingly rife with the allure of just becoming dependent on Blaise again. It had been such a taxing relationship to bear through his unassailable barriers he had set about himself.

"I have an empty room here, in any case, so if you happen to have someone looking for a place, let them know they're welcome. Okey dokey?" Hannah picks her teeth with her fingernail, unloosing something that might have been chicken. I wasn't as close to Hannah when we were at Hogwarts. I don't think we've actually talked to each other. While we did move around in each other's vicinity, Hannah was too shy and too plain for Lavender to consider conversing with. It's surprising how much I've grown close to Hannah in recent years. It was just before I went off to work under Slughorn, when I was trying my fling with opening a shop on Diagon alley. I needed a room and Old Tom let me live with Hannah who had been working for him in the Leaky Cauldron.

First she took care of Old Tom in his twilight years, did the dishes, then managed the bar. Then she began to put her own spin on the place, turning it from the damp grey seedy bar into a watering hole where the more bohemian wizards and witches flocked to. I think she's found her niche in life, singing songs, serving drinks, and making everyone feel welcome. She's my hero.

"How's teaching?" Hannah asks. Dennis brings us some snacks. He's lithe and cat-like, stalking over quietly and placing the wooden bowl of pretzels. He lingers a moment, his sharp elfin eyes dancing about amused at everything. He winks at me before he returns to the bar.

I feel that my breath has left me for a moment. He is positively beautiful.

The Creevey brothers had been such fans of Harry, orbiting his vicinity like shepherd dogs. But since Colin died, Dennis seemed to have dropped off the radar entirely. Lavender would have loved to have her hands on him.

"Hey!" Hannah snaps her fingers in my face. "Eyes off the merchandise, honey."

I grin like an idiot.

"He's too young for you," Hannah snickers. "Besides, he's not into witches."

I make an 'O' with my mouth, more crestfallen than surprised.

"You really have set up the place nicely," is all I could say.

"Uh-huh," Hannah laughs. "Bad ass heartthrob bartender. Why else do you think I have customers? They're certainly not here to listen to my yowling."

"I like your songs!" I'm surprised.

"Yeah," Hannah sniggers, "you're my one witch fan club, girl."

The door burst open all of a sudden, letting in the cool autumn air along with a veritable troupe of young boys. I hide under the menu, lest they're Hogwarts students, but then remind myself that it's curfew. There are six of them but they scatter themselves about in three tables covering most of the floor. They're in their twenties, good looking and tall, and well aware of their looks. The emblem on their business robes mark them as Weasley Motors employees.

They order a round of beers, but are mostly talking to each other, rather loudly about revenue and forecast and consumers. I don't know why they picked the Leaky for their meeting; there are a lot of other posh venues elsewhere. But Hannah seems pleased at the influx of customers that she rushes back to the stage. She _accio_s her guitar, eager to make regulars out of new faces. Business must be slow.

She starts out with a slow and quiet tune, but once she begins to sing, one or two of the boys throw her an annoyed look.

'Mind keeping it down?" one of the boys snap. "We're trying to have an important meeting here."

"We could open up a room for you upstairs if you need some quiet space." Hannah suggests meekly.

"Just son't sing, okay?" the leader of the group quips. You can tell he's the leader as he has his own table while the others show him charts and graphs.

Hannah tries to keep a brave face, looking a bit embarrassed as she climbs down from the stage.

"Hey!" Uh-oh. It's one of the earlier customers, a centaur who had come with his mare. "Some of us come here for the music."

The young men look annoyed.

"Go find a barn, horsemeat," another one of the boys voice in. Hannah looks positively dismayed on stage. But one of the guys thought that was pushing it and waved apologetically at the centaurs.

Dennis walks over to the boys. "Hey, guys. We're really a stage-bar here. If you want someplace quiet I can show you to our upstairs rooms-"

"Get lost, faggot," the nearest to Dennis pushes him away. "We're leaving. C'mon, Holkham. I told you this shack wasn't worth the beer."

The leader, Holkham, looks angry. He simmers in his seat for a moment, then pounds the table with his fist before shoving himself away.

"Alright, boys," Holkam gets up, a couple of beers crash to the floor. He looks at the smashed glasses with disdain, hurriedly checking if any of the beer had splattered on his robes.

"Hey!" Dennis tries to grab him, but is blocked by two of Holkham's lackeys. "You gotta pay for the beers and damages."

I am curiously expecting a fight to erupt by now, hiding behind the menu, peeking out like a mouse. My heart has jumped into my mouth and is pounding away like crazy. If a fight breaks out I am compelled to help Hannah and Dennis, but then a part of me trails off wondering if it would put my position at Hogwarts in jeopardy.

But Holkham just fishes in his robes before he tosses a handful of Galleon on the pile of shattered glasses.

"Keep the change, faggot."

The boys leave without any more fuss. No one picks a fight. There is no conflict, just transaction. It's all business, isn't it? There is no dark lord, no Death Eaters, no oppression, no criminal. It's just the mundane life of people. I don't think those boys from Weasley Motors were villains. They were just a bunch of young upwardly mobile wizards. They just picked the wrong place to hold an after-work business meeting. Perhaps the other bars were full. Perhaps...

An argument breaks out between the Centaurs; the mare is chiding the stallion why he had to put his stupid horse head in other people's business. They take the fight outside, angry and probably not returning. Dennis picks up the shards of glasses, looking dejected, while Hannah sighs and gathers the Galleons, making sure it covers the damage.

"One of these is a twenty Galleon," Hannah tries to cheer Dennis up, handing him the posh coin, but Dennis shoves the broom into her hand and stalks out the back.

* * *

"Hey, Neville," Neville Longbottom is surrounded by admirers, throngs of students flocking about him asking questions after class. It's amusing how all my students evaporate the moment the bell tolls. Neville looks at me startled, but quickly detaches himself from his students and rushes over to me. The students throw me an angry annoyed glare but soon disperse.

I've been avoiding Neville. He represents all the HarryPotterGinnyWeasleyHermioneGranger of my life, and I just couldn't handle any more of his "adventures" and "courage" and weird shit that makes people do things out of their way. But I knew Neville's been trying to talk to me ever since school started.

"Parvati," he smiles but looks harried. "I've been wanting to talk to your about-"

"Yeah, okay, Neville," I don't want to talk to him about whatever he's wanting to talk to me about. "Look. I was wondering if you can help me on something."

"Uh, sure. Okay." Neville is always a bit low on self esteem. Probably because he hasn't looked in the mirror to see how bloody handsome he's become. That's the problem about growing up the 'fat kid'. he eagerly pushes his agenda away and give me his 'full attention'. I blush. Damn.

"Look," I try to begin again, looking somewhere else, "Do you like living here at school?"

"Oh, yes!" Neville smiles widely. "I've set up a room in the gardens where I can go right to the green house in less than a couple of seconds."

I roll my eyes. Neville is such a nerd. I stop him before he tries to explain to me the wonders of communion with plants.

"That is no place for a grown man to live, Neville."

"It.. isn't?"

I latch on to his arms, walking him along the corridor.

"C'mon, Neville," I coax him, "You need a fresh and normal living space. Somewhere where you can fix yourself up, meet people, hang out."

"I ... okay," Neville is too bewildered.

"Do you have a girlfriend?"

"No, no,' Neville stammers. "I'm not um seeing anyone. No."

"See?" I grin, "you should get out more. A handsome guy like you will have girls flocking to you in no time."

"Huh... Really? No... No. I'm.. I'm not very good with ... ," he can't bring himself about to say 'girls'. He blushes madly. Oh, he's so cute. I could just eat him up, myself. But I need Neville for something else.

"I have a friend who's looking for a tenant," I begin.

* * *

"Neville Longbottom?" Hannah scowls.

"Just what you need," I stop my hand halfway from the nut bowl. I need to lose weight.

"Oh, wow," Fay is hanging about the bar, stuffing herself with nuts. "Neville bloody Longbottom is going to live here?'

"I didn't say yes," Hannah snaps.

"Why not?" Fay whines.

"It'd be great, Hannah," I break off a tip of a walnut and nibble on it. "A famous ex-auror living in the spare room of the Leaky. People would think twice of making a mess here."

"He's so... " I have never seen Hannah at a loss for words, lately. In her student days, yes, she was a bit tongue tied. But since she became this weird hippy person, she was a veritable wordsmith. "he's so... so..."

"Handsome," Dennis grinned lecherously, over the bar. "Oh, he's hot. That's what she's trying to say."

"Shut it, Creevey." Hannah tosses a rag at him.

"She has the hots for Neville, she does." Dennis cackles, swinging his long legs over the counter. Yum.

"Really?" my surprise gets the better of me, and I lose self control as my hand dips into the nut bowl, extracting an almond. "I didn't think he was much your type."

"Why not?' Hannah looks flustered as she combs her hair with her fingers.

"I thought you had a thing for Ernie," I shrug. My hands are bewitched and they are feeding my mouth almonds against my will.

"Eh," Dennis sticks his tongue out in disgust. "We no talk about the Macmillan here."

I am utterly curious about what happened to Ernie while I was away serving the Slug, but Hannah abruptly agrees, forcing the topic away from my inquisitiveness.

"Alright," Hannah gives in. "Tell Neville I'll have the room ready by the weekend."

"You said you already have the room ready," I look at her suspiciously.

"It's a girl's room," Hannah snaps. "It's connected to my room. I'm going to have to move Dennis into that room and give Neville his."

"Hey!" Dennis objects. "When did this happen? Besides, I'm a guy, too. Just because I'm gay doesn't mean that I'm not a guy."

"It's not because you're gay, sweetie," Hannah bats her eyelashes, "it's because you're my employee, and I can tell you to move into the spare room or the street. Your choice."


	6. Chapter 6: Lavender Brown

6. Funeral

I can't see the coffin from here. Despite being Lavender's best friend through Hogwarts, my embroilment with her death and my low social status profile pushed me out to the periphery where Hannah, Dennis and Blaise were, namely the curb. Literally the curb. I think it's Hermione Granger's voice making the speech, but I can't hear what' she's saying from here. There is a throng of reporters, celebrities - even some Muggle celebrities, ministry officials and other who pack the inner court of her funeral.

I am depressed and I have been smoking endlessly for the past hour, as though I were breathing air. Blaise hovers about me, obviously wanting to crumple my open packet, but thinks the wiser and just helps himself for a smoke.

"Incendio," I mutter, holding up my wand for him.

"Thanks," he mumbles back.

"This stinks," Hannah scowls. "What are we doing here? What are you doing here? You should be right up there with her family."

"'s okay," I shrug. My eyes are watering up all of a sudden. Blaise strokes my hair, but I don't stop him. It feels nice.

I never really processed Lavender's death properly. The few moments of me being tied up and facing her empty expressionless face kept creeping into my dreams. Some days I dream of those eyes suddenly glaring at me, as though alive, despite knowing that she is dead. Some days I dream of various killers who had cursed her, then apparated away. Some days I am the killer myself, and I can't stop myself from murdering her.

Seamus stopped by the Leaky the other day and confessed he was confounded by the clues. There was no trace of the killer. No sign of anyone having been there. He was having trouble covering my ass, since he knew in his heart that I would never do such a thing. But the young girl, Giselle, was pulling public opinion against me, calling in reporters, making interviews, putting pressure on the investigation, that Seamus wasn't sure whether or not I would have to appear at the Auror station, again.

"Lavender was having a lot of trouble recently," Hannah looks at the dispersing crowd.

"Trouble?" I scratch my head. I hadn't seen Lavender for ... let me get my facts straight. I think the last time I saw her was during the semester break. The Wizarding university teaches higher professional jobs based on NEWTs. After Hogwarts half burned to the ground by the Death Eaters in '97, and then the remnant Death Eaters attacked in '98, Slughorn gave up on Hogwarts and asked favours around until an old student of his, as always. One of the students happened to be the Dean of Advanced Charms. I returned to school in '03. Not because I wanted to study, but because Blaise.

huh?

Yeah, because Blaise suddenly waltzed into my life.

"Yeah," Dennis takes on, his messy dirty blonde hair is ruffling in the wind. "Malfoy, or Weasley. I'm not sure, but the rumour on the street was that some big corporation wanted to come in as a distributing partner. I'm not sure which one. I saw both of them across the street enter the Leaky. Draco Malfoy and George Weasley, and then one time, even Ginny Weasley."

"The funny thing," Blaise picks it up, "is that Ginny almost never comes out to represent her family. She's too protective of Potter to do something. I guess there's some real pressure between the two."

Blaise stubs out his cigarette. His collar is overturned in the back of his neck, and I suppress an urge to straighten it for him. He hasn't shaved this morning. He always shaves clean. Something tells me that he has had some difficulty these past few days. Or had he been like this for several months? No, he's unshaven this morning because he's been distraught lately. Sometimes I think I understand him, but he places so many barriers around him.

Blaise scratches his stubble with his long dark slender fingers. He catches me watching him and offers his small smile. It's reassuring.

"We should celebrate ourselves," Blaise suggests suddenly, "not this press rubbish. No, this isn't Lavender. I think we should do her justice. Have a party for her. Not a press junket."

"That is bloody amazing," I find myself gasping.

"So, cool, man," Dennis cackles madly. "For Lavender."

"We do it at the Leaky," Hannah states sharply.

"Where else?" Blaise cracks a genuine smile.

* * *

Dennis is a wizard at decorations and I don't know how Hannah would survive without him. Hannah is generally messy and haphazard. She has great taste and a sense of artfulness, but she is definitely messy.

The drapes are lavender and brown and the candles burn red and gold. I see a large picture of Lavender when she graduated, smiling and waving her hands. Other pictures of her dancing, one of them with me, practicing for the Yule Ball. A picture of her with glasses at her drawing board, a picture of her sewing, a picture of her wearing the first dress she sold.

There is a part of me that lingers in those pasts with her. A part that I desperately cling to, perhaps because the future of those pasts were less rewarding. If they were less rewarding, it was because they were painful, and disappointing, and I have grown for those long years to fear what tomorrow holds.

Hannah is holding the guitar, and sings about those Lavender had left behind. How despite the fact that Lavender had gone up in the world, she had not flown but simply grew with her roots firmly in the ground, like a great blossoming tree. But once the angels picked up to take her to the heavens, she became uprooted and withered and died.

A few others came along. Fey Dunbar closed shop, posting a sign commemorating "Lavender Brown Day", and that naturally attracted a whole bunch of others. There's Tracy Davis. I used to be so jealous of Tracy Davis. Tracy is a Healer at St. Mungo's, grew up Slytherin with Blaise, and like Blaise kept away from the Draco group. Smart life decisions, it seems, considering where Draco left Pansy Parkinson. Blaise used to tell me that they were just good friends. I think they're more than that now. Perhaps I'm imagining things. He lives his life, he must have evolved beyond our relationship.

Penelope Clearwater, who works as an editor at Obscurus Books, came as a friend of Hannah, and I hear she used to be real close with Katie Bell. But not even she knows where Katie Bell's disappeared to. There are a bunch of others. We are mulling about, and soon we begin to deconstruct into a haphazard party, chatting up on each other. I didn't think I'd ever enjoy myself like this, talking about the past, but it's sweet.

I try not to think about the past, at least not the recent past. The old past is fine with me. The old past is save, like the thick walls of Hogwarts before You-Know-Who tore them down. The old past is bright and delicious like chocolate frogs. Before I know it I feel like I'm back in the common room, around a rug and a fireplace, talking Quidditch, talking classes, talking about boys.

* * *

"You never talk," Hannah says after she empties a bottle, "about the Wizarding university."

"Yes," I refuse to cave in. That is one place I do not want to return to.

"What happened?"

It's a mixed bag of disgusting and heartbreak. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it.

"Nothing," It's Blaise. Suddenly he's at my side. "Nothing happened, Hannah. Leave it at that."

* * *

Not nothing.

I went to the Wizarding University, after I folded up my shop. Padma had just been engaged to Roger and they needed our place. For a while I lived at the Leaky, and I worked as a waitress with Hannah. But I didn't want to just serve drinks. I got in a row with Hannah, not because of anything in particular but because I was dissatisfied with my life.

Then Blaise came in one day. It had been years since I'd seen him. I never really talked to him at Hogwarts but he wasn't distant. He was excited to go to Wizarding University, having apprenticed under the Healers at St. Mungos, he wanted to become a Healer himself. Blaise frequented the Leaky a couple of times after that. I knew he had come to see me. We talked and talked way into closing hours. He talked of going away, getting far away from the mundane life at Hogsmeade. He was fed up with his mother and her constantly changing husbands.

And then one day he asked me to come with him.

No, I didn't follow him that day. I said goodbye to him. I said I wanted to but couldn't leave my life here. I said that, unlike him, I had nothing particularly interesting to chase in life, that I was still finding things out.

"Can't I be enough for you?" he asked suddenly.

"No, Blaise," I stammered, knowing that this was a confession of his feelings, but resenting that it was also a request for me to abandon what I wanted. And despite still not knowing what I wanted in life, I didn't want to end up just looking at a man.

Blaise was naturally disappointed. And he often tells me that he took that first rejection rather badly. I meandered a bit after he left, but eventually I searched over and over for what I wanted, at least an inkling, at least something.

When I arrived in London, I avoided Blaise for some time, embroiling myself in my work, trying to get into the moment. I mostly worked as Slughorn's teaching assistant. My mind blanks out when I reach Slughorn.

No, it was nothing vile. He is Slughorn, and whatever one may have an opinion of him, he was not improper with me.

Rather the opposite. I was nothing to him. I imagined a close relationship, like Dumbledore and Harry Potter, like Old Tom and Hannah. But I was simply his errand girl. And while I stuck by him for so many years, in the end he kept forgetting my name.

"Girl!" he would call me. "I thought I told you to have those owls sent last week!"

"I sent them, Professor."

"Stop making excuses, girl." Slughorn doesn't even look at me when he scolds me. "This is the Slug Club party invitation, girl. I am expecting the likes of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger to be there. If you haven't received a reply to the RSVP you should have sent another owl, not just sit at your desk like a mindless monkey!"

That was the general gist of life under the Slug. Demeaning, demoralising and sad. Just like Hogsmeade I had left, and Hogsmeade I had returned to.


	7. Chapter 7: Neville Longbottom

7 Welcome, Neville!

I think time slows down when I slap Neville across the face. Part of me panics, and another part of me feels as though I've relieved a weeks worth of constipation. Okay, I feel bad. But it wasn't supposed to go like this. And despite his good will, Neville sort of deserved that.

* * *

_A few hours ago_

Neville began moving his things from Sprouts old hut near the greenhouse. I think it's ludicrous that Sprout has taken herself up in the high tower where Dumbledore once dwelt, and that she had considered that a Herbology professor should always shack it out with the bugs and the weeds. A few of Neville's students, his army of admirers, helped move some of his things, but mostly it was just Ted Lupin.

Ted Lupin is in his last year at Hogwarts. He looks slightly skinny, until you see how amazingly muscular he is.

I once saw a wolf in the woods of deep Bavaria, when I was working for my thesis in isometric formulation of crystalloids for projection and forecasting on 11 dimension time series (i.e. I was trying to make an actual working crystal ball). I think the wolf was magical, perhaps a descendant of a permanent animagus or a werewolf. It was jet black and deep as the night, larger than a bear. Yellow eyes were sickly and odd, and shone of darkness as though projecting a dorm of 'dread'. What I remember are its eyes as it remained stationary, while its huge body paced back and forth, sizing me up. I peed myself there, petrified. But, for the life of me, the wolf didn't seem to consider me worth the effort. I think it sneered at me before it left. Teddy Lupin feels like that. He feels predatory, despite being the calmest and politest boy in Gryffindor. He feels like he would strip your bones of all its flesh, yet he timidly claims that his favorite subjects are Runes and Arithmancy. He hasn't spoken a word as we packed Neville's things into a charmed Muggle truck.

"I didn't see you at the funeral, Parvati," Neville is sheepish as always. My childhood self would have swooned being surrounded by these two hunks, but my thirty odd years have mellowed my passion for cute boys.

"And I didn't see you either, Neville," I am sorry at being cross at Neville, but the funeral was fresh in my mind, and to me he was one of the 'have's against my 'have not's.

"I was standing next to Ron and Harry," Neville seems oblivious of my predicament at the funeral, and what he had obviously spoken as a simple description of where he stood came out very very wrong to me.

"Gee-whiz, Neville!" I snap, "I wonder how the bloody hell I could have missed you, then!"

Then I remember I am at Hogwarts, surrounded by students. Neville seems alarmed, but he's bumbling and apologetic, oblivious to my anger, which makes me dislike him more.

"I think we're done loading everything," Ted Lupin steps in, talking to everyone else. "I'm going to finish up with the professors, so everyone else return to your houses."

Since Ted is driving, I find myself unable to avoid sitting next to Neville in any possible combination, and so I end up pressed between the two.

"Sorry about that," I mutter.

"No," Neville is all kind and forgiving, "I understand you're upset, Parvati. Lavender and you were really close, weren't you?"

I apologized to Neville, but that doesn't mean I have to talk to him.

"So," Ted avoids looking at us, mostly because he's driving, but he's looking at his flight plan in the most intense way. "You two were together at Hogwarts."

"That's right," Neville smiled, awkwardly eyeing me, "we were Gryffindors in the same year."

"Yeah," Ted grins, clearly uncomfortable. Am I enjoying this? I would be lying if I weren't. "Professor Longbottom talks about you alot, Professor-"

"What does he talk about, Mister Lupin?" I interject sharply, noticing the lie.

Ted tries to look at Neville for pointers, but since I'm sitting between them, he has difficulty trying to communicate with odd dorky expressions.

"Uhm," Ted's attempt number one, "he says he was really into you."

"That is very improper, Mister Lupin," I reply immediately, "and, no. Neville did not 'fancy' me."

"Okay..." Ted trailed off.

"I doubt Neville talked about me at all, did you Neville?"

"I," it was Neville's turn to make funny faces at Ted, "I'm not much of a talker, Parvati."

He grins, or I think he does. It looks more like a wince, as though anticipating a blow. He's being pathetic, and I'm being ridiculous.

"Don't worry, Neville," I roll my eyes, "I don't begrudge you of forgetting I existed."

"Don't be silly, Parvati!" Neville squeaks.

"I never imagine that I'm the topic of your discussion when you go see Harry or Hermione."

Neville tries to say something, but I cut him off before he harms himself.

"Don't lie, Neville. I don't mind. But what I do mind is that I'm here helping you move. I guess it's as a favor to Hannah, and it's a favor to you, since I'm the one who suggested you take the place. But, still I keep wondering why you have to keep feeling sorry for me because you didn't mention me to Harry."

"I," Neville tries to say something, but closes his mouth after he flaps his jaw a couple of times.

"Yes," I get it off my chest, "I am resentful that I was Lavender's best friend, but I had to wait outside the funeral circle. And, yes, I resent that Lavender's family asked Hermione to give a speech. But that mostly has to do with me, and I don't resent Hermione for making time to speak at her friend's funeral. And I don't resent Lavender's family for thinking it best that I had to wait outside. I am just resentful at myself that I had to wait outside. Am I making sense?"

The boys nod vigorously. Boys will do anything to keep a girl from talking.

A flying motorcycle pops out of nowhere and cuts past our trajectory, forcing Ted to bank hard. I knock my head with Neville, as his head ricochets off the cabin wall.

"Watch where you're going, asshole!" I vent my anger out the window, past Ted, who's barely recovering his composure.

"Screw you, witch!" the motorist gives me a finger. I return the gesture, and we part ways.

The boys are clearly uncomfortable with me.

"The sky's filled with crazies these days," I complain. "Too many charmed Muggle vehicles."

"I guess it'll pass," Neville shrugs. "It's just a fad, Parvati."

"It's not a fad," I sigh. "Why did we not use a wide area apparition to move your stuff?"

"Because," Neville scratches his head. "well, Teddy offered to help us move?"

"Because, we're using less and less of our own magic, Neville," I am ranting, I know. But, this is my favorite rant, and Neville deserves to hear it for being an insensitive jerk. "Everything is done like the Muggles. We buy charmed vehicles, and stopped using haphazard floo networks. Port-key registration is decreasing, apparition licenses are decreasing, everything is being handed over to specialists."

Neville looks uncomfortable.

"But specialization leads to so much more advanced magic, Professor," Ted argues. "When Mister Weasley first enchanted a car, it always crashed somewhere, drove off into the woods on its own, or ran off into a million separate pieces. But now, look at this. It's a marvel of precision Magic."

"And what did you do for it, Ted?" I goad him on. "What part of this truck did you enchant?"

Ted is not an idiot. I can see him trying to find another angle of approach. But this is a verbal battle that I've rehearsed several times over many a beer.

"I'm still a student, Professor," he finally speaks up, "and I may never individually reach the complexity of successfully and reliable enchanting a muggle car, but I will one day be very specialized in my own field of study. Someday, I hope, I will be able to create complex Runes that respond immediately to the Rune-wielder's demand, rather than being a stationary symbol. But that can only be achieved because I'm just one man. I can't be distracted by doing every type of magic for myself."

I am privately surprised at Ted. That was one of the best retorts I've heard from a seventeen year old. And though I would have a million things to throw back I don't want to step on a budding sapling with my jadedness.

"Ten points for Gryffindor," I smile.

"I know what you're talking about, Professor," Ted continues, emboldened by my compliment.

"You do?" Neville chirps. I swat him into silence.

"I grew up with a very old fashioned lady, Professor," Ted explains, "she's as pureblood as they come, but a kind old soul. She always used to do things with magic, and I mean everything. From dressing herself, to cooking, to doing the dishes. It's all her magic, as though she's swimming in it, you know? She used to conjure up these dancing dogs, made of clay, when I was young. And I could tell she put a lot of effort to do them right."

Wolves, honey, I think to myself, not dogs.

"You know, some days I try to do what she did," Ted continues, "but for the life of me, it's not as good. They keep on shattering. I tell myself that I don't need to make clay dogs dance. But then again, I would have liked to."

"Well, why don't you try, Ted?" I hadn't noticed but Neville's expression had become rigid.

"Sir?" Ted, I am told, is usually extremely close with Neville. Both of them had lost their parents, and grew up under their grandmother's care. Neville had taken it out of his way to always look after Ted, something of a protege. In fact, Ted had been one of Neville's star pupils being trained for the Tri-Wizard. But Neville sounded frosty and Ted grew frigidly nervous.

"I am so fed up with people," Neville stammers in a torrent of words, "about people begrudging Harry, or Ron, or Hermione, because they've gone up in the world. I am so fed up with people who think that, since they were a classmate of Harry's, they also deserve some sort of recognition in association. It's idiotic."

"What-" Ted sounds confused, but I know Neville is talking to me.

"If you want to do something about making clay dogs bark, then go ahead and try it, Ted. Don't go blaming society that since they make everything easy for you, you stopped being able to make clay dogs dance. You're inability to make clay dogs has nothing to do with this truck being enchanted by Weasley Motors. Stop associating this with how some people are better off than others. Ten points from Gryffindor!"

"Can't you see that we're becoming everything that makes Muggles Muggle, and stopped being everything that makes Magic magical?" I retort hotly. "We're practically becoming a muggle society, except for the tiny detail that our cars fly. Every new idea is just some wizard trying to emulate the success of Arthur Weasley's enchanted cars. And you think this has nothing to do with Ron or Hermione? Who do you think keeps the Muggle trade open for the Weasleys to import Muggle items? Do you think Hermione doesn't put pressure on the office of Muggle relations and trade? Do you think she doesn't-"

"Don't you dare insult my friends," Neville slams back, "Hermione would never maintain Muggle based commerce just for the sake of Ron. You know she's not like that."

"You have a deluded sense of loyalty to friends you've known fifteen years ago, Neville," I shout back, "Hermione is not a naive little school girl anymore. If you think someone in her position-"

"See?" Neville accuses me, "It's all about why Hermione is up there in the world, while you're just ..."

Neville stops himself, turning red in the face.

"What!" I nearly scream my head off. "I'm just what, dammit! Come on, let me hear you say it. Finish that sentence. What the hell am I, Neville?"

Neville is adamantly silent, flushed red and puffing. Is he flushed red, or am I just seeing red. I want to hit him, but it's too cramped in here. And I am just becoming aware that we have already landed in front of the Leaky. Outside the truck, through the dirty windshield, I am also becoming aware of Hannah and Dennis, looking appalled, wearing silly hats, each holding a part of a banner that reads: "Welcome home, Neville!"

* * *

Neville is looking at something, and I am looking at something else in the other direction, but I haven't yet made up my mind on where to fix my angry gaze on. Dennis Creevey keeps walking across my angry line of sight transporting Neville's things while winking at me once in a while. I try to remain angry, but he's such a cutey.

I don't really 'hate' Hermione. I don't hate her at all. In fact, back in the old days, I used to be more friendlier with Hermione than Lavender was. I would always find someway to defend Hermione, even when Lavender briefly dated Ron. My dislike of Hermione, I have to admit, was actually impersonal. I came to dislike Hermione as an adult, rather than a girl. And the small lack of friendship when we were girls suddenly snow-balled into a full blown disagreement of political views. I think I oppose Hermione as an idea than dislike her as a person. Does that make sense?

I still don't agree with Neville. A person in Hermione's public position, in my opinion, should still abstain from offices that might bring suspicion of favoritism. Then again, Muggle relations were always a tender subject. There's a weird atmosphere of being "muggle-correct" in the community. For instance, almost no one uses the 'M' word any more. Slughorn had banned Cormac Mclaggen from future Slug club meetings because Cormac had called someone by the M-word. It's just not an eight letter word, any more, and the Slug was always a political whore. It must have killed the Slug inside to ban Mclaggen, especially since Cormac later opened one of those Runes and Arithmancy ventures. But Slug has his principles, as I've come to learn, and one of his primary rules of conduct is "Thou shalt never associate with someone who may put your reputation at risk!".

What I can attest to is that Neville has definitely changed since I've last known him. 'Known' is an exaggeration. Neville was generally quiet, and people tend to form solid opinions about quiet people without really 'knowing' them. I can say that Neville Longbottom is a brave man, in vein that I can draw a caricature of his personality akin to someone like Harry Potter, just more shy, just more nerdy. But something has definitely changed in Neville, who had hardly ever disagreed with anyone with such passion as he had with me.

It takes a couple of hours helping Neville unpack his things. It wouldn't have taken that long, but Neville seemed uncomfortable in my presence, and I wanted it that way. Ted returned to Hogwarts, and Hannah and Dennis had retreated downstairs to prepare the Leaky for the evening customers, so our awkward silence stretched long into the sunset like lazy shadows lingering on the streets.

"Look, Neville," I give up. F*** you, Neville, I hate you. "I'm sorry I yelled at you, okay?"

Neville is being a dick and refuses to reply. Since I offered the olive branch it would be petty of me to retract it and go back to being full on bitch on him. What is it with Neville Longbottom and Harry Potter? What does he owe Them? I know that Neville, in the recent history books, is usually considered the Fourth of the Trio, (or was it the Fifth of the Quartet, the Sixth of the Quintet?) but despite his success as an Auror, he's still just a normal wage ploughing bloke like any other.

"Segregation of the Wizarding World," Neville mutters.

"What?"

"Is that what you want, Parvati?" Neville seats himself calmly on the bed, his hands clasped before him as though he had never lost composure. "Do you want us all to revert to the old days?"

He's all out confrontational mode, and he's taken the high ground, bastard. Ex-Auror or no, I've honed my skills arguing every day with Blaise, touching on all the golden goodies of modern magical civilization from 'would it kill you to take the dishes to the sink' to 'quit working for Slug and let's just get married'.

"You are confusing the issue by exaggerating my statement," I state calmly; two can play this game. "When I say that muggles are permeating everywhere, my solution does not necessarily imply that muggles and wizards should be completely segregated and we should retreat to the dark ages."

Neville's angry stare is hiding something. My eloquent, if I may say so myself, reply to his challenge should have diffused him. A lonely boy who lived alone? Auror or no Auror he didn't stand a chance against a girl who staved off marriage so she could waste her life in despair and chase away someone who loved her all through the power of words.

So.. I steel myself grimly, he is not attacking me because of my logic. He is not upset at me because I am a traditionalist, anti-corporate, liberal. He is upset because I said 'bad things' against his dear friends, and that is all the more unforgivable.

"You sound just like Voldemort," Neville states. "You sound just like a Death Eater."

Hearing the name sends shivers down my spine. Despite my tenure in Dumbledore's Army, despite having fought at the Battle of Hogwarts, I am still terrified of that name. But Neville is still just being a jerk. By stating You-Know-Who's name, he's stating how he was one of those who really stood beside Harry Potter in everything. He is a fanatic, and perhaps, like me, he too is nostalgic about the past. Like an old war-horse, he is unnerved by the calm and pleasant green pasture, twitching and unable to rest. No, this is not about me. I think it's about Neville.

I look down at myself, unpacking his things for him, sitting on the floor of his room which I procured for him, after helping to move his things for him. And all the bastard can say is how I am like a Death Eater. I can guess where this is coming from, partially I suppose. It's never something heart rending or deep. All our human emotions are just an extension of fickle desires, especially those that seem more deeply rooted.

I pull out a cigarette from my pocket. Hannah would kill me if she found out I smoked in her building.

"Incendio," I never could master wordless incantation for this single spell. I am the Professor of Charms at Hogwarts, and I have a degree in Advanced Charms from the Wizarding University, but for the life of me I can't seem to light my cigarette without muttering the spell.

Neville glares at me. His anger is running deep. I look about the half unpacked room. There are a couple of pictures hanging, but they seem random. His parents, his grandmother, him and Harry, him and Shacklebolt, him and Hermione, him and Sprout, even him and Ginny. Okay, I'm done.

"Where's Luna, Neville?" I'm done being the nice girl.

Neville's eyes shoots darkness.

"Let me guess," I exhale, "she left you? She couldn't deal with that enormous chip on your shoulder? I suppose you join Harry at Christmas but not when Luna's coming?"

"You don't know what you're talking about," Neville glowers, his voice is throaty and menacing, and I think I should pull away.

"I always thought Luna was the unstable one," alarms ring in my head, abort abort abort, "but now I see it's no wonder she left you."

Neville looks like he's imagining darkness on me. His face flickers between rage and frustration and regret. But soon it settles down, washing away emotion as he turns his nose upwards and looks down at me from his perch, as though delivering my judgement in his eyes.

"Murderer."


	8. Chapter 8: Seamus Finnigan

8. Where dreams went to die

I feel terrible.

Neville feels terrible, too, I suppose. We've been avoiding each other at Hogwarts, and after class I couldn't bring myself to go to the Leaky, but instead found myself wandering about, eventually entering Three Broomsticks. Hannah would have my head if she knew I had betrayed the patronage of the Leaky, but then again, how would she know? There are two kinds of people in the wizarding world, those who go the Leaky and those who go to the Three Broomsticks.

I enter cowled, just in case. And I find just the man I was looking for.

He is enormous, and his back is threatening to tear through his Auror uniform. There are rumors that even on his off days Seamus drinks at the Three Broomsticks until his wife Susan leaves the house. Seamus smiles, and it's always jowly. He looks haggard, and I can see a couple of strands of white hair in his short crop. I don't know whence he's been so huge, but Seamus has arms as thick as my thighs and everything about him screams 'all meat'. A platter of sausages spread before him with a large pint of beer that shimmers sweatly, begging me to take a swig. But it's a week day and I had promised Victoire to look up her personal project early in the morning.

"You don' have to worry about Lavender's family pursuin' you, hon." Seamus's accent has grown thicker and thicker each year. He looks like he doesn't even try to get his meaning across sometimes. "It's jus that Giselle gal is up to her neck. She's callin up the ministry sayin tha Harry's coverin yer ass, and it's a conspiracy."

My finger swims through the nut bowl. It's greasier than the ones Hannah keeps, and I withdraw an odd little fellow that seems to be covered in a mild coat of nut dust.

"Well," I shrug, "public opinion is not something anyone can change on their own. I'm just curious how the investigation is going."

Seamus is scratching his head, fidgeting.

"I've been through the memory you've supplied to the station's pensieve, and compared it with that of Giselle's," Seamus stifles a yawn, "and it's clear that neither of you killed Lav, if that's what yer askin. Both of you witnessed her death after runnin in from the hallway."

"Any clues to who might have?" It's been nearly a month since the murder and I had hoped for more than just hearing a confirmation of what I already knew.

"Lav had security measures," Seamus frowns, "some of the best. But the only ones there were you and Giselle. Dean was thinkin it might be suicide."

Seamus is a horrible liar. It was obvious that he also thought it was suicide.

"I heard people arguing, Seamus," I am exasperated, "she was chasing someone out of the room, before I entered."

"Yeah," Seamus looks away, then gulps down his beer before looking back at me square. "As I've said, Parvati, I've been through the Pensieve that I've practically memorised everything that's been collected. We have absolutely nothin."

"What about Lav's wand?"

"It was missin." Seamus mumbles. "Look Parvati, it's all I can tell you. Just leave it at that, okay? Lav's buried and laid to rest. The family isn't after you, and I'm sure once Giselle grows to noisy, we'll clamp down on her or somethin."

"Not that I like Giselle or anything, but it's that..."

"For her own protection," Seamus smirks and empties his mug. "Public opinion ain't so forgivin when you rant against Harry for too long."

"Neville," I finally say. "Neville called me a murderer the other day."

Seamus barks a laughter so loud that he garners attention of the usually uninterested crowd. I'm terrified that eyes are suddenly turning our way, but Seamus hardly notices.

"Neville's an idiot," Seamus pops a nut into his mouth. "He wasn't much of a sharp Auror back when, and he didn't quit the Force just because of 'his love of Herbology'."

"I thought he was this really big Auror guy," I am mildly surprised.

"Neville wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed even back then. He never had the street smarts, always just a bit book smart, and only when it interested him."

I suppose Neville was like that. I recall back in the day how he had earned Gryffindor points by stubbornly trying to stop Harry Potter from sneaking out at night.

"You think a guy like our Neville," Seamus grinned, but I detect a bit of resentment on his part as well, "the square and by-the-books guy would cut it as an Auror? He's more square than Hermione. At least Hermione had Harry and Ron to let her see the flip side of the world. Well, he ain't no Harry Potter, our Neville."

"It's funny how Harry's no longer an Auror as well," I shrug.

"Who says he ain't?" Seamus winks at me. Then in sotto voce, he leans in closer, "Harry was born to be an Auror. He's so good at being an Auror that the Auror office can't even handle him. They just have to deny that Harry's involved once in a while, since he's so bloody famous."

Harry Potter. I haven't thought about Harry Potter as a human being for a long time. But Seamus, with Dean, had remained with the Aurors for so long, and no doubt close to Harry.

"But he's so... he's so..." I can't even grasp the magnitude of the person that had once bumbled about with me at the Yule Ball.

"He's larger than life, our Harry," Seamus wistfully smiles. "Yeah, he's so friggin rich that he's richer than Ron, despite not having to sell little magic gadgets. He's so good at his job that the Auror Command flatly denies that he's involved in all those sneaky sneaky things they need him to do; and he does them alone. He's the single most powerful Wizard I have ever seen, and we've all seen Dumbledore and You-Know-Who."

Seamus had not been the greatest fan of Harry's Fame back at Hogwarts. But now I see he is truly respectful of the Chosen One.

"The best thing about Harry," Seamus gulps down his beer, looking up as though he's been fulfilled. "is that he loves what he does. That's what I think keeps him going. Returning again and again to the Auror Command, despite his obvious need not to earn money, risk his neck, yadda yadda yadda. That is Harry, Parvati. And I am bloody proud to have served with the best of them."

Seamus's words are Harry seeps in, less hurtful or jealous than before. You take the good with the bad, and you can't make everyone like you. For every Harry Potter there was bound to be someone like Seamus and I in the shadows. But while Seamus was inspired by Harry, I let it mire me down. Why did I let it mire me down like that. I just say that life wasn't what I hoped it would be. Seamus is a better person than I. It takes a while to let reality and expectations come to terms. And though his marriage isn't in the best of places, Seamus has a fervent love of his work that I had found lacking in me for quite some time.

"Quidditch World Cup on the horizon," Seamus beams expectantly.

"Oh?"

"All of Dumbledore's Army have been invited by Kingsley to sit in the VIP box with him."

"Oh?"

"Haven't you got the Owl, yet?" Seamus fishes his pocket for his tab. "It'll be like a class reunion."

The Tri Wizards and pre-holiday exams were too much on my mind, lately, to say nothing of Lavender and Neville and Sprout. I am suddenly gripped with terror.

Seamus gets up and flips a ten Galleon at the Barkeep.

"See ya round, hon," Seamus waves, "don't worry. I'm sure we'll have something turn up."

* * *

Victoire Weasley is apologetic, as she sheepishly apologizes that her mother wanted someone else to supervise her in Charms for the Tri-Wizard.

Neville has taken Teddy Lupin as his protege to compete for the Tri-Wizard, and is building grooming him to be his "Star Pupil". I have yet to present a Star Pupil to Sprout, and my hope that Victoire would be it is dashed. She said her mother has asked her Beaubatons mentor to personally come over to the Weasley estate to oversee her training, and that she would have to skip classes leading up to the Tournament. I don't mind.

I see Victoire bow curtly, in all sincerity, and walk out the door.

I used to be passionate about something, but where did that evaporate to? Have I just become a big ball of jealousy? Is that what drives my life? I am again thrown into disappointment about myself. Again, I feel like I am back at Slughorn's.

"What is this?" Slughorn looks at my research proposal. I had spent a couple of days running through the literature, combing over the recent development in charms. I had to postpone Blaise's birthday party, and Blaise was kindly understanding. which hurt more. But there I had finished my proposal with a modicum amount of expectation that Slughorn would be surprise, please, and even look at me in a new light.

And he's holding up my proposal with his fingers, as though he didn't want to defile his desk with it.

"It's a novel method of identifying latent magical signatures in common Muggle items-" I try to explain with relish, noticing that with each word out of my mouth Slughorn's expression sours.

"I asked you, Girl," he says, sounding patient, oh so infinitely patient, "to conjure up a simple proposal for the Malfoys."

"Sir," I try to explain, perhaps he hadn't got the gist of it, "this method is an entirely new way to do things. You know how the most frequent accident in mass producing Magical artefacts is that the object of enchantment unwittingly has a -"

"Are you trying to teach me, Girl?" Slughorn looks at me with mock surprise. "Are you so bloody daft that you can't even handle a simple proposal? Do I have to put it to words, so it can get through to your thick head? I want a proposal that can be easily managed, so I can divert the rest of the funds for setting up the Weasley project."

"Sir," I feel the blood drain from my head, "I thought-"

"I didn't hire you to think, Girl," Slughorn snaps. "I hired you because you were Harry Potter's friend at Hogwarts. You're here to be nice to Ronald Weasley and Draco Malfoy, not here to bloody THINK!"

He ends it in a scream.

That day I quit. Who am I kidding? That that I took the day off, drank myself silly in my room. Blaise asked me again to quit my job. We had a fight. Again. Blaise left a few days later. And I returned to work for the Slug, as though nothing had happened. So, where is my passion for the things I love, Seamus? I think I let it whither away in my heart somewhere. To fetch it back, I have to wade through a ton of dead bodies that had accumulated over it. The dead body of a happy life with Blaise, a dead body of a scholar of Charms, a dead body of living my own life is all piled over my dream that I left there.

I fought for my dreams back then, and I think I lost.


	9. Chapter 9: Cho Chang

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter characters.

I've finally added a cover, apart from my go-to "blindman" cover. If there's a problem with copyright or use of image, please let me know. It's a faded picture of Parvati with a butterfly. I have zero photoshop skills.

* * *

9 Cho Haley, nee Chang

What is Magic?

The question placed to a Wizard or a Witch is as difficult as asking a five year old do define the nature of life. For a natural born Witch or Wizard Magic is such a part of one's life that it is impossible to imagine it as something new and weird. At least for the Wizarding community, there has always been a stark contrast to which we could always measure our reality in the half blood and muggle born members. I had been born in a long generation of pure blooded witches and wizards that my childhood was measured whence we could first learn to levitate objects and change the color of our toys. Though we were never skilled at it until we reached Hogwarts, the use of Magic was something that was expected to come. And so I had quite some difficulty when I first arrived at the Wizarding University, and on Slug's lectures he touched upon the central question of 'what is the nature of magic'?

Despite my disparage at Slug's personality, the man was a solid scholar, and during my early graduate years I flocked to his lectures as though he were a veela. His solidness in the theoretical nature of magic, however was soon eclipsed by his political nature. I was no fool to have run into his apprenticeship without any foreknowledge of his hypocrisy. But still I was young, and I imagined that despite the hurdles I would overcome.

Here he stands before me, now, in my office at Hogwarts. Like Magic.

My hands tremble, but I try to calm them. And I measure my facial expression to quench the instinctive terror and radiate some measure of confidence in my own being.

Unlike myself, the Slug is a professional. He knows who he is and he knows who I am. Despite his obvious nature to have visited me with asking a favor, he is not groveling nor overly friendly. He is calm and composed, but only so far as to be bereft of arrogance, as he stands confidently beside the parents of a young girl. The girl I have not seen before, but the mother who accompanied her I know well.

"Professor Parvati Patil," Slughorn is cool, offering the coolest of warmth in his smile, "I am sure you are well acquainted with Mrs Cho Haley, nee Chang."

The last I heard, Cho had married a muggle and had been living a muggle life. Usually a witch who takes the muggle life lives her life a muggle, completely shielding her muggle family from the magical world. And even though the offspring should be born magical, it would be entirely up to the parent to decide. Cho had, so far, kept her wizarding connections completely secret from her family so far, as no one knew what had become of her besides her marriage. But the child was obviously pre-Hogwarts age and something was amiss.

Cho looks frightened, her large eyes wider than usual and emanating a sense of urgency.

"Parvati," she shakes my hand too warmly.

"Cho," I hug her in return. I was moderately friendly with her, but she was too popular even for Lavender and me. But right now, she seemed to need a hug. "How have you been? I missed you!"

Cho looks obviously relieved at my friendliness, and turns to her daughter.

"Kimmy, this is mommy's best friend when mommy was in school," Cho comforts the child. The obvious lie probably meant that Cho wanted the girl to feel safe in my presence, to consider me as her surrogate mother. Why. One of the first things Slughorn had taught me was that Witches and Wizards were idiots when it came to logic. Even in magic there was always a Why. And especially in human nature there was always a Why.

I take cue and kneel before the young frightened girl, taking care to discard my heavy wizarding robe to reveal more familiar casual garments underneath.

"Hey, sweety!" I pinch her cheek. The girl is holding an elephant, and it seems she lets it the briefest space to breath as her arms sneak over and touch my butterfly hairpin. I take it off and pin it on Kimmy, and the girl seems relieved. Almost happy.

* * *

Victoire is an angel, and despite her awkwardness when being called into my office, mostly trepidation on whether or not I would hold her to a grudge for refusing my coaching, she immediately melted down into a tender soul and took Kimmy by the hand to show her the Gryffindor tower.

Alone, now, and free to show weakness, Cho breaks down crying immediately. The Slug is calm and cold and calculating as ever, and it's a good thing that he's not a 'villain', just my villain, my own personal villain. Seeing Cho was unable to continue, the Slug speaks on her behalf, recounting how Cho came to him.

"I think it's foremost for the sake of clarity to state that dear Mrs Haley should be referred to Miss Chang, again," the Slug is blunt, and unapologetic, and perhaps it was necessary, in retrospect. I am not a bright person. It takes a couple of moments for that to sink in.

"Huh?"

Slug offers me his disdainful look, as though he could barely manage the suffocating atmosphere of mediocrity to which he was subject to at the moment.

"Oh," it dawns on me, now. That Cho has returned from the Muggle World, crying, with a daughter of pre-Hogwarts age, hoping passage to safety of her youth. "I'm so sorry, Cho."

Men, I am frustrated. Cho was one of the most prettiest girls in all her time at Hogwarts, the jewel of Ravenclaw. I suppose she was a bit of a fish out of the pond in the muggle world, but she couldn't quite recover from the world where You-Know-Who tore down the kingdom where she was Queen and Ced Diggory was King. I never understood muggles very well, but I suppose men were men in any world.

"Don't worry, honey," I offer, brightly, "men are such a-holes. I never got married, myself. It's so hard to find the right guy-"

Cho is staring at me with a lost look of confusion, while the Slug coughs trying to interrupt me. Okay. I am confused. I think I should shut up.

"Mister Haley has passed away, recently," the Slug acts like he's trying to be polite while gently shoving me into the shark pit. The bastard could have told me before hand, at least that he was coming, at least that he was bringing someone, and that someone was Cho, and that she was a widow... okay. Maybe I should have been a bit more cautious. Cautious is not my forte.

"Oh," Oh, okay. I get it. Huh? "I'm sorry, Cho. I didn't know."

"No, I'm sorry," Cho stutters. "I didn't know who to turn to."

As Cho pieces together her story, I'm able to add one and one to make two point three. Cho had been living a 'normal muggle life' of being a 'housewife', which sounds more like something akin to 'house elf', but with sex. She bumbled about a bit getting used to things but often relied a bit on magic to do the rudimentary chores when her husband was out of the house, like dish washing and clothes washing. I have no idea how Cho managed to live a life where something as simple as cleaning your house and washing your clothes took up, or at least was supposed to take up, most of your life. But she must have found some semblance of peace after the insane damage of You-Know-Who versus the Chosen One in that she really committed to that life, to her love and her child. She talked about taking Kimmy, by foot to a school that was supposed to be located in your proximity because apparating was out of the question. She talked about buying food and preparing it and the knowledge that was required to actually make something edible without the option of willing it into being - though she did admit that sometimes she went against ministry policy to spruce up something really nice. She looked happy when she told me of her muggle life, hidden magic from the prying eyes of the mundane who were curious where the nice young Mister Haley had fished up this pretty girl out of nowhere. They had hierarchies of their own, where Mister Haley would have to entertain other beings who were no more powerful than him in magic but simply had more 'paper power', as Cho put it. Her husband's bosses and friends would be curious about him marrying someone 'without a background', but their love seemed real and she was content.

And then it happened.

One day she kissed her husband goodbye and sent him off to work. And then during the day, she played with Kimmy, went to the market to prepare something, food, probably. And then the day turned to afternoon, and afternoon turned to evening and then darker and darker into night, and her husband was not home.

The Muggle investigators couldn't find him for days. No one could find him for days. Cho, becoming desperate, tried everywhere. She even tried contacting the ministry, but the ministry declined to get involved at first, because it was their policy not to get involved with the muggle world. And when she kept on contacting people and pestering people, the Auror office eventually did do a quick investigation but detected no use of magic and assigned it to primarily a muggle concern to be solved with muggle means.

"Miss Chang came to me, but only through the Auror office," the Slug finally speaks. He is not boastful, but merely stating facts. With all his intellect, the Slug is an idiot when it comes to bragging. For someone like him, he shouldn't need to brag, and I suppose it's a habit, even when he's talking to someone like me, so insignificant in his eyes. "I, of course, took immediate attention. Cho was a member of the Harry Potter's Army, like me-"

I keep my eyes steely in place from rolling my eyes. Slughorn's mind has somehow fused the Order the of the Phoenix, to which he was an on-the-field new member during the Battle of Hogwarts, and Dumbledore's army, to which Cho and I were both members, but Slug selectively chose to forget my involvement in anything.

"- and I am always concerned of the welfare of my friends. How was it that someone has committed a crime in the muggle world, that has so deviously managed to avoid the persistent concern of both the muggle world and the wizarding world. Despite her pleas, what amazed me most was how forgotten her singular case was by both governments. Where did Mister Haley go? What happened to him? Why has he suddenly disappeared, and why does no one seems concerned?"

Story of my life, I muse drolly.

"No one is investigating, Parvati," Cho looks at me shaken. "No one seems to care. The Muggles think that he's been embezzling company funds and have escaped the country. They point at me and say that he's got himself a trophy wife from nowhere, sets up a phony appearance of life and just escaped with the company's money as soon as he was able to. But he's not like that, Parvati! I know him. He'd never leave his family."

"The Aurors are no better," Slug adds, "they've taken more pains to investigate why it's not their concern than investigate the disappearance itself."

It's not something new. In the old days, magical gossip got around and roused a lot of people. Harry Potter at Hogwarts dating a girl used to make the Daily Prophet. It was a small community back then. But somehow the world became so large and we got lost so fast.

"But I'm no investigator, Cho," I try not to sound like I'm distancing myself from her concern, but I am truly curious why they came to me.

"Of, course, you, aren't." The Slug is such a bastard. He lets his words drip with every bit of derision he could muster. I think it's the high point of his day to ridicule someone under him.

"I'm no investigator, Cho," I glare at Slug for a moment; he couldn't care less if I'm annoyed. "But how do you know he's... you know... dead?"

I was expecting a plausible fact, I suppose. They had come naturally so distraught. It was just a simple question, I suppose. I wasn't expecting the following.

"I can feel it, Parvati!" she gushed.

No, really. She gushed. She sounds like a bad actor. My expression must have betrayed my utterly crumbling sympathy for her situation.

Cho looks worried, trying to be pleasant. She's here to ask a favor, after all.

"I'm going to look into it, Parvati," She says, "But I can't leave Kimmy alone."

Oh. I should have seen that.

"Of course, Cho!" I squeak, wanting to be helpful. "I'll take care of Kimmy... How long do you expect to be gone?"

Kimmy looked like a sweet girl. I could go about helping her for a couple of days. Help her with her school work. Show her some magic.

Cho's eyes are suddenly steely. She is not a wide eyed fragile beauty Queen of Hogwarts, all of a sudden. Her lips tighten, determined.

Uh-oh.

"I don't know." Cho states. "I don't know how long I'll be gone. But there's something around. I sense darkness. And for the love I held and for the safety of my child, I have to do this. I can't ask you to join me walking into the darkness, Parvati. But, please keep Kimmy safe."

This is awkward.

Darkness? Destiny? I hate that. I hate it when everyone thinks that their life is suddenly embroiled in this great epic saga, and they suddenly start disregarding everyone around you, and everyone suddenly has to sing your tune. Is this it? Is this why Slughorn brought Cho to me? Because he thought up 'Helpful, Vague, Ally Person who could be trusted, but not with too much' and thought of me?

And what happens to Kimmy while her mother suddenly decides that despite the tragedy that has befallen her life, she suddenly decides to "Fight Darkness" and it's okay? No, idiot! When tragedy happens, you're supposed to just pick up the pieces and try to make semblance of what's left of life. You don't go into the eye of the hurricane to chase windmills.

"You mean indefinitely?" My dry tone breezes through the conversation like a sudden drop in temperature.

Cho and Slug both look startled, having been caught up in their grand 'Mystery' and 'Investigation' and 'Darkness'.

"Of course, it's the least you could do to help," the Slug scoffs as he admonishes me.

"I'm afraid for her, Parvati," Cho looks at me pleadingly. "I would have gone to Padma. You know we were close. But Padma has her hands full. You know, children."

"Ah, yes," They're my nephews, of course I know. Again, they would have sought Padma. But, of course, I couldn't know. How could I? I don't have children.

"Everyone else didn't want to listen," Cho continues, unsure. "I didn't want to burden Neville, I heard he has so much on his hands. I never did know Hermione very well, and I couldn't ask Harry."

Oh, why not, Cho? I catch myself from saying. This was pure name dropping.

"The other girls my year weren't responding," Cho is near tears, "Does anyone know where Katie is? Katie Bell?"

I don't think I can listen anymore. I'm sure that, like Flitwick, like Slughorn, like Sprout, I have probably been relegated to the bottom of a very very long list.

"Don't worry, Cho." But my tone is already icy. "I'll take care of Kimmy. She'll stay with me. Go chase the shadows."

The Slug and Cho exchange a concerned look, unsure what mood I am in.

I give them my reassuring tender smile, "No, really. I'll take care of Kimmy while you're gone. She'll be safe here. Hogwarts is safe."

I suppose they really had no choice other than me. Sucks to be them.

The reason I took on Kimmy? I can't explain what caught me up in the moment. The rage that I was being sought for, only for every other reason because Padma wasn't available. The rage that Cho and the Slug would assume that I would help them because I'm just another "friend". The exasperation that somehow I could understand the frustration Cho was feeling. No, don't worry, I'll take care of Kimmy, tossed aside for your crazy Quest, Cho.

* * *

Summary: I think I'm finally progressing from the first act to the second act. I've finished setting up the characters, I think.

_There is definitely something going on,_ Neville thinks.

_No, life is random and meaningless, stupid,_ thinks Parvati. _By the way, where is Katie Bell?_


	10. Chapter 10: Horace Slughorn

Disclaimer: Parvati Patil and Co are characters of the Harry Potter Universe, Properties of JK Rowling.

Summary: Lavender Brown is dead, and the investigation goes to a box in the basement marked X, later to be glossed over by Fox Mulder and Dana Scully. But for now, Parvati Patil is facing her greatest challenge: Horace Slughorn, ex horrible boss.

* * *

10. Kimmy Haley and the disappearing father act

When Cho left to say her goodbyes to her daughter I was left alone with the Slug. Well dressed in a tweed checkered suit, manicured and unassailably proper, he looked in good health as he pointedly stared at his tea, as though the leaves were speaking to him. I found it amusing to be on the inquisitional end of the conversation as I stared at him across my desk with mixed feelings of revulsion, fear and respect. Slughorn's suit looked was impeccable in its style, not too flamboyant, tempered and intellectual, never shabby. His haughty nose refused to dip even as his eyes drooped below, in its own way refusing to meet my glance.

Tick- tock- tick- tick, my unnatural clock chimes the most unnerving rhythms. It's something of an invention of mine to keep people from becoming too comfortable when I wish them to hurry on with their business. The clock senses my mood of impatience. I see it growing on the Slug as he finally lets out a sigh.

"No," he says, finally, "despite what you may have concluded, Cho is not being entirely irrational."

"I was worried for a moment that you were becoming ... ", (as delusional from boredom as our former Queen of Ravenclaw), "sentimental."

"Don't patronize me, Girl," Slug snaps, and allows me a small victory of irritating him. "You may not have noticed, but someone's tampered with Miss Chang's memories. It's her singular will and excellence of her mind that at least allowed her to preserve the sense that something was wrong with what she recollected."

Memory charms were not quite well regulated. In the old days, Magic was rarely regulated beyond the taboo of the unspeakable curses. Ancient wizards enjoyed freedom beyond anything imaginable by present day descendants. Great Merlin was reknown for twisting the history of nations, putting sovereigns into endless sleep, tampering with the lifeblood of civilizations. Old great ones fought death, controlled time and rained disease down on whole cities. Come to think of it, You-Know-Who was paltry in comparison to some evils Merlin let pass. But Memory, memory charms were barely regulated even now.

There's a magical theory about Karma. No one's quite proven it, but Sybil believes that Karma is the great equalizer. Sybil once told me that divination and destiny all teetered on the ultimate quid-pro-quo of life. If destiny befalls someone with great injustice, then there is something to eventually even it out, and that one shouldn't push their luck too far. For some magics, Karma acted less, while in other instances Karma was as irritable as a girl in her period. Like all theories from Sybil that ended up in the waste bin, she never got around to complete her magnum opus of cataloguing magical success and failure rates based on 'Karma', since she could never prove its existence. But she did tell me that she believed Memory charms were one of the most fickle. Look at Gillderoy Lockheart. There are no Great memory charm practitioners. Mostly because memory charms eventually backfire with a vengeance.

"Girl," Slughorn snaps his finger in my face, irritably. "I was saying that someone's tampered with Miss Chang's memory."

"Mrs Haley, Professor," I correct him irritably. He returns a knowing sneer, as though he supposes that my correction stems from my state of remaining single. "Besides, how would you know this?"

"I'm particularly adept in memory charms, Girl," he replies. I wait patiently but he refuses to supply substance. He maintains this smug condescending smile that makes me want to punch him.

"There were irregularities in her memories retrieved to a Pensieve?" I ask, dryly. I am a professor of Charms, you know. "Share."

Slughorn reluctantly draws the gossamer strands of memory with his wand, hesitantly wavering it before me.

"You have to have a repository, Girl."

"Don't patronize me, Professor," I push forward a rather large Quaffle sized crystal ball. It's my prized possession.

"I see you've been somewhat successful in creating a crystalline repository," he scowls but his eyes betray interest.

It hasn't been able to predict the future, like I hoped, but at least it shows clear quality image that a Pensieve would have done while soaking your hair in water which could have been anywhere. Crystal balls were cleaner, prettier, and kept your hair from being messed up.

I watch Cho's memory unfold. And frankly it's boring. I can sense her anxiety grow as the day sets to darkness and Cho anxiously passing about. She finally picks up the telephone and starts talking to people. And the memory ends.

I look up at Slughorn incredulously. "What am I missing?"

Slughorn sighs, shaking his head. "At first I thought like you. Here is a girl, once pampered at Hogwarts, ran away from the Wizarding world unable to cope with tragedies in her life, and then wants to return with a flair and fanfare."

"What am I missing? Do I have to compare this with Kimmy's memory?"

"Everything's there in plain sight," he replies in his sing-song voice.

I watch the event unfold again. There are stuttering of Cho's movements but nothing beyond the usual of what one would expect from a recalled memory. Unlike what we are led to believe about memory, memory is mostly impression and reconstructions. We can never actually "see" what had progressed before. Only what the mind perceived and retold into a narrative. But despite the fact that memory acts like a retelling through the eyes of a fictional writer, some things it can't quite confabulate. Small details. These things remain hidden in the registry of the mind, unrecalled yet noted. When consciousness does touch upon it, it then becomes distorted. But before then, especially memories reconstructed through the Pensieve, details that weren't tampered with remains clear. I begin to focus on the objects that Cho would not have paid much attention to. That ruled out Kimmy, the Clock, the Phone, pictures of their family.

What would Cho have not concentrated on, yet would be telling enough to make the memory a fabrication?

Nothing obvious. No magic would be able to selectively erase a person from a view. A better way would be to selectively erase a whole frame and splice them together. I would be looking for altercations in the details. Something touched but wouldn't usually be touched.

Then I saw it. The food on the table. Once set up in preparation for a family of three. It had been cleaned and set away by nightfall. Had Cho been so worried about her husband, the food would have gone untouched. I move the memory forward and backward and forward again.

There is a moment where Kimmy is in her school clothes and then in her play clothes. People's clothing could change, but not without her school clothes being neatly packed into a corner. A few more details begin to surface. And a few more later, I am convinced that the memory has been altered.

"Her husband was home." I conclude, staring up into Slughorn's content and smug smile.

"I was beginning to worry," Slughorn drawls, "that you have become too soft in your tenured position."

* * *

"I've spoken with Madame Sprout," Slughorn states bluntly, "to keep Kimmy in your care under the Gryffindor roof."

"I am not the Head of Gryffindor House, Professor," I remind him as we walk down the revolving staircases to the main entrance of the Castle.

"Yes, but Mister Longbottom is away, and you would act as his deputy in the time being."

"Is that all you require of me?" I ask, somewhat impatient.

The stairs are in mid transit from its swinging position as we wait for it to reconnect with another set of stairs. Slughorn turns to me, looking at me up and down for a moment. "Girl, you think too highly of yourself from time to time. I tire of reminding you of your place in the matter of things. I have taken this matter up with Harry Potter himself. All you have to do is look after the girl. I had divulged this utmost of secrets to you since I feared that you might be negligent with the child if you lacked the motivation. Don't imagine yourself to do greater things."

I suppress an urge to push him off the ledge.

"And what about Cho?"

"Miss Chang," Slughorn giggles like a school girl. "Miss Chang will be off stirring up a nuisance. She can't be helped. I do hope she attracts enough attention. There is nothing like a loose canon to rile things up. With her husband's life and child's safety at stake, I am certain she would be a great decoy as I conduct my own investigation into these matters."

I suppress an urge to push him off the ledge, but the staircase has already reconnected and, despite my impulses, I see him safely to the door.

"You suspect our... villain... to strike again?"

"So far," Slughorn pauses, "Lavender Brown has died under curious circumstances, and Cho Chang has lost her husband. Curious, don't you think? If you could show the least of initiative, I would ask you to try and get in touch with as many of your old friends from Harry Potter's Army as you can. I have a hunch that the next blow will strike someone more important than either of the two. We must stop this train of events from progressing before it reaches Potter and the Weasleys."

I open the door for him, lest he should forget he was just about to leave.

* * *

A long trail, thin heavy white wisp of smoke coils from my lips as I remove the cigarette to exhale.

It's not my usual brand of poison, but something I fished out from Blaise's drawer. It's thick and heavier than my taste, but I like it. I'm drunk. A little bit drunk from whiskey, a little bit drunk from wine, and a little bit drunk from being an unprepared mother without having been pregnant.

Blaise's office is dark and I kept it that way. I let myself sink into melancholy better that way. It's a fine line between becoming regretfully drunk and soberly sorrowful. Blaise had said he was busy tonight and couldn't humor me, and it was a full three hours until Hannah and Dennis closed shop. The other available friend would be Fay, and I didn't have the stamina to listen to Fay gush about the new teenage boy band.

Blaise and I used to live in a one-room. We had a small bathroom that only house a shower and a toilet, but no faucet. We had to shower on the toilet seat, but sometimes that ended up being a really ticklish affair. It was a small apartment and we were messy as hell. We would make puppets dance to our tunes in a small makeshift theater we set up, playacting the hellish day we spent. The memory surfaces now, I think, because Blaise did the best Slughorn impressions.

Kimmy was not a darling child as she seemed to be.

As soon as her mother left, she suddenly turned thirty.

"Now we have the stuffy old man and my freakishly flakey mother out of the way," Kimmy states dryly - are kids seven years old allowed to be dry? - when we're alone. "let me set some ground rules, lady. I do simple magic when mother and father aren't looking. I don't need adults to bully me around. I'll go sleep with the big girls, but I don't want you to tell me when to go to bed and what I'm supposed to do. As long as I keep out of trouble, you keep out of my hair, okay?"

When asked if she was surprised about Hogwarts, Kimmy said, "Mother wouldn't shut up about it. She said she was supposed to keep it a secret, but she's so flakey I had to remind her that she's told me the same story about the Three-Wizard Bowl and how she went kissy kissy with Cedric Diggory who sparkled in the moonlight a million times. Ugh! As if!"

Did she want to learn Charms? "Get out of my hair, Lady."

Was she worried about her Father? "Father has a girl friend. He's probably with Cecilia. I figured he'd abandon us as soon as mother lost her marbles. It was only a matter of time."

I hate her already.

I shouldn't hate little girls, but I really really do. Especially this crazy little Scot who swears like a sailor.

I hear giggling.

My heart pounds faster as I hear footsteps leading up to the hallway. There are two of them. I quickly extinguish my cigarette and jump behind Blaise's desk. I thought Blaise was out of town. He said he was busy tonight. There's a voice of a girl with that of a man, and they both sound as though they're drunk on laughter. Did Blaise let other people into his office? Did he rent it out to a friend? Was someone breaking in?

I hear the key slip into the lock. No. It's Blaise. I think it's Blaise.

It's Blaise's voice I hear as the door opens.

"Welcome," It's Blaise, in his most deep and seductive tones. "to my humble abode."

"Someone's been here Blaise," I hear a woman's voice.

Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. My heart has jumped to my mouth. Blaise has no way of not finding me. Should I apparate? Should I just bolt for the door?

"What.. the..." Blaise stammers. "someone must have broken in."

I can sense that he's wanting it to not be me. I can hear it in his voice that he wants me not to be here so he could be with his new girlfriend. Bastard. He didn't have to lie to me. We were 'ex's. We didn't have to skirt around. I didn't have to hide from him. What am I doing hiding from him. He's probably noticed my cigarette stub by now.

"Someone's been smoking, Blaise," the woman. Who is she? She sounds familiar.

I hear her footsteps approach the desk.

"Maybe we should go," Blais is a dummy.

"No, Blaise," the woman snaps. "Someone's been here. Smoking. In your office. Does someone else have the keys? I thought this was just our little place."

Whoever she was, she was here often as well. Just not when I was around. Shit.

I decide to salvage some dignity. Besides, curiosity has gotten the better of me. I steel myself for a confrontation and stand up from my hiding spot.

Tracey Davis's deep green eyes star back at me coldly.

"Shit, Parvati," Blaise groans, covering his face. I can see he's annoyed. Not as annoyed as I am at him.

Why am I annoyed? I don't care. I don't want to think. And Why are these damned tear streaming down my face?

"Parvati Patil," Tracey frowns, as she stares at me with a smug look on her face. "I thought you two were finished, Blaise."

"Yeah, yeah, of course we are," Blaise stammers. "Shit, Parvati. You could have told me you were crashing here."

"She 'crashes' here?" Tracey asks, incredulously.

"Just once in a while. She needs a place to smoke." Blaise blabbers, trying to make excuses, spilling all my secrets as though it were spare change he wanted to assemble into a Galleon. "I had no idea she still had a key."

"I was just leaving," I am barely about to say that. I try not to look at Tracey, I try not to look at Blaise. My face is flushed and I feel nauseous.

I try walking past Tracey, but Tracey suddenly grabs my arm.

I dare not look her in the face. I am crying like a little girl and I dare not look at her.

"I know you had a thing with Blaise in the past, Patil," Tracey states firmly. "But, if he hasn't made it clear, yet, Blaise is with me."

"Take him," I reply, frigidly. "I don't care."

But Tracey's grip is strong and vicelike as she strangles my arm. "Keys."

I shake her arm off, furiously, stumbling and hitting the desk. But Blaise is rooted to the spot, arm crossed, trying to make it clear to Tracey where his loyalties lie. I fish about my pockets, but my tears are covering my view. I fumble about before remembering that I left the keys on the desk. I snatch it up and toss it squarely at Blaise's face.

"Hey!" Blaise spats. "It's not like we're seeing each other, Parvati. I don't know why you should be upset."

I am already past him, and my feet take me down stairs. Oh, Merlin, I hear them giggling behind me. I stumble on a few steps, the last few on the way down. I think I sprained my ankle, and I am sprawled on the foot of the stairs. Behind me they are making a joke of me. I hear Blaise toss our old memories about like a useless rag, only fit for making amusement to Tracey. I hear the joke and the punchline and the punchline is me.


	11. Chapter 11: Katie Bell

Disclaimer: Parvati Patil and Friends are Harry Potter characters from the books, the movies and the games and other ancillaries. They are the IP of JKR.

Summary: Today, Parvati hits ROCK BOTTOM.

* * *

11. Where forgotten girls go

I would like to have said that I returned to the castle, and maybe I should have. In a couple of days the Tri-Wizard team would be leaving for France, and the rest of us would have to cope with being left out of the fun and games. I had duties to attend to, students asking for guidance, and an angry little girl that had suddenly been dropped on my lap. But I made my way, limping, down Diagon Alley to the Leaky, as though on autopilot. I needed somewhere to crash, and in my mind the ground was coming up fast to shatter my soul.

What did you expect, Parvati? Did you expect that after all the years of hell you put Blaise through, that he would somehow reconnect with you?

Of course, it was Tracey Davis. She works with him at St. Mungo's. They're both Slytherin. They've been friends for a long time, as long as the Golden Trio's been together, as long as Lav and I. Come to think of it, had it been me who was the interloper? Come to think of it, I knew nothing of Tracey Davis, other than the superficial knowledge of her house, and that she wasn't as obtrusive and mean like Draco's group. No, she was always more aloof and detached... like Blaise.

I am before the Leaky, and the banner of 'Welcome, Neville' flutters in the open window on the second floor. There's a low clutter of hearty warm chuckles emanating from the inside, inviting me in. My hand reaches the doornob, wanting to throw myself into Dennis's arms. No, wait. Damn. Into Hannah's arms. Into Hannah's arms.

I peak through the window, just in case.

The hall is nearly empty. I see Hannah, Dennis and Neville all gathered around one single table. They have their party hats on. Hannah has her guitar in her lap. They look so happy. They look so genuinely amused. Hannah shoves her guitar at Dennis, and Dennis picks up a tune as Hannah invitingly pulls Neville up, demanding that he dance with her. Neville is bumbling as usual, placing a hand on her hip, as though he were dancing at the Yule Ball.

This was Neville's going away party, I realise. It was a small get together among friends, to wish Neville good luck at the Tri-Wizards.

My scribbler starts to alert me that someone has sent me a message. It's enchanted to the shrill tone of Padma. I notice I've been standing at the door, holding on to the doornob for who knows how long? No, I don't want to go in. I don't want to interrupt their small gathering. I let go of the door and hurry away as my limping ankle would allow. They seem to have noticed my presence and I pick up my pace.

I don't want to be where I'm not wanted! I'm done with being left out for one night!

I hear Dennis coming out into the Alley, but by then I've already turned a corner and I am rapidly rushing down a street that is vaguely uncluttered and dark. I think I hear Hannah's voice calling my name. But then that, too, disappears into the distance, and I find myself in Knockturn Alley.

* * *

They say an ancient magic surrounds every stone of Hogwarts. Most of the secrets of Hogwarts, at least those discovered by now, were by design. Salazar wanted a dungeon and Gryffindor wanted a tower. But some magics are borne without a clue to where it came from. It exists, and no one seems to know who put it there. Perhaps we had forgotten them as well. Sometimes, secrets are nothing so great than a mere loss of memory.

Such was the case of the Room of Requirement. No one knew who built it, but merely that it was there. It existed mostly as a secret passed on through shy girls who wanted a private place, but suddenly it became the headquarters of Dumbledore's Army. It is an amalgam of potent wishes and hopes of beings. Perhaps the question is why wouldn't such a place exist?

I stand before such a place. Somehow, I feel like I have been brought here. It is a small inviting tavern that I have never seen. Not that I profess to have known much about Knockturn Alley. But it seemed so out of place from the dingy dark and dreary street from which I vanished to. I cannot help but enter this one.

It is cramped, but spacious, in a sense that each table is barely enough to accommodate two, and are sitting beneath low lying alcoves, as if to shield the inhabitants from prying eyes. I cannot see quite well who inhabits each private stall, but they are mostly girls, young women somehow drinking and smoking to themselves. I feel like I am in heaven. Everyone is hushed, as no one is really conversing. The few who do are barely whispering to each other.

I find myself a table and settle down, allowing the warmth of the hall to snuggle me closely. I look about for a menu, but no one bothers to come service me. I wait patiently a while, afraid of being obtrusive. Perhaps some of the other patrons would come help me. I crane my neck about, looking to see if I can catch an eye. But everyone is huddled. The light is too dim to make out anyone's faces, and they are all hunched over their drinks.

"Um..." I look around, wavering an uncertain index finger in the air, wanting to order. I want a beer. I want an Ashtray.

Someone settles a large sweaty pint and an ashtray before me. I look up to see a face covered in a cowl, her face only visible from the mouth and below.

"We don't talk much, here, Parvati Patil," she intones in a statement that seems so loud, but my ears know that it was barely a whisper.

"How do you know me?" I try to peer at her face, and I think I see shadowed eyes and a face covered in boils. Perhaps the poor woman is hiding some disfigurement. It's not my place to pry, and I doing want to waste such a good find.

"That I know you is enough comfort I can offer you tonight, Parvati Patil," she simply states. "That you have come here on your own... makes you welcome. Don't push your luck."

And as though she had apparated, she is gone from my sight. Something is wrong, but somehow her suggestion "not to push it" comes to the forefront of my mind. I try to settle in. The beer is tasteful but exceedingly strong. And my own pack of cigarettes seem stronger here. Soon the voices around me seem more muffled than before, and I feel deep and drowsy. I usually never drink alone. I think I hardly ever enjoy drinking alone. Today was a special occasion. And though I have a few beers by myself, now and then I am hardly a person to drink myself, by myself, to oblivion. Somehow as the intoxication settled in, warning bells flashed in my mind. Somehow I felt I was becoming too drunk than what was good for me.

I try to wave my arms about stubbornly.

"Hey!" I try to catch someone's attention, anyone's attention. Did the weird lady with the boils spice my drink? My head feels heavy. I try to look at the other occupants. I hadn't noticed it before, but they all seem to be wearing the same clothes, the same hair, all their faces hidden in shadows.

"Hey!" I try to reach out to grab on of the other occupants. And dutifully, the person turns around to see me.

Am I drunk? I can't seem to see her face. No matter how hard I concentrate, her face keeps shifting out of focus. The woman I tried to grab in the other aisle, she is staring at me squarely, but why can't I see her? I look around the room. Everyone seems to be staring at me. Everyone has turned from their aisle and is now staring at me straight in the face, but I can't see anyone their faces. They are not without a face, but somehow, I can't seem to concentrate on ... Is that Katie? Katie Bell?

* * *

"Is she awake?"

I think it's morning. The breeze is a cool autumn breeze that tickles my cheeks, and the air is fresh, but warm - not cold like the dawn. It's the feeling you get when you wake up at mid morning, after a good rest. But my head is heavy as lead and I feel the dank scent of beer-gas coming up from below.

"She's just drunk," the derisive snide tone is that of Blaise, and I am against jolted to my senses.

Where am I? Shit. I think I'm in Blaise's office again.

"Parvati Patil sprawled in the middle of Knockturn Alley, and all you can say is she's just drunk?" That's Hannah's voice.

"She was depressed, went out for a drink; Big Deal." I want to sit up and slap Blaise in the face.

"And why was she depressed?" Hannah asks sharply. You go, Girl! "What do you know, Blaise?"

Maybe I should get up, now. I don't want to put Blaise in too much of a bad position.

"She found us together, last night," Tracey gives her two cents.

Okay, I am going to keep my eyes closed until that pesky vixen goes away. I cannot believe that she's still here!

"Why would that bother her?" Oh, my God. Neville's here too. Why is Neville here? "I thought you two broke up."

"See, she's awake," Blaise says, dryly, "She's blushing."

Damn! That bastard.

My eyes open up with a start, and it takes a while to get accustomed to the brightness. I groan as I perch myself up in bed. I feel as though a carriage ran over me, and looking down, my robes certainly look as though it's been through much worse than that.

Dennis, Neville, Hannah, Fay, Tracey, Blaise. Oh, Joy.

"Look," Tracey looks down at her watch, "I've got to go to work. See you later, hon." She finishes by pecking Blaise on the cheek. Blaise offers to see her down stairs.

"This must be really awkward for you, Parvati," Neville mumbles as the two disappear down the stairs.

"Really, Neville?" I snap. "You think?"

"Cut him some slack, Patil," Dennis shoves a cup of tea under my nose. "We've all been combing the streets for you last night. We were all worried sick. Neville's the one who found you curled up by a garbage bin in Knockturn Alley."

Oh, Merlin. I stare into my tea cup, unable to look up. My face is burning. _How's my hair?!_ Oh, Merlin, Tracey Davis just left with her healer scrubs on, looking sharp and glamorous. Oh, Merlin's beard. _  
_

"Are you really upset about Blaise, Parvati?" Neville asks with his big puppy dog eyes and all the concern in the world melting out from them like thick gelatinous sticky ooze.

"Stop pestering her, Neville," Hannah pulls him off me. "You should have joined us last night, Parvati."

"You seemed busy," I mutter in to the cup. I didn't want to sound petty that I was jealous of Neville. That I had felt that Neville had stolen 'my group' and had replaced me, and I just couldn't handle that after being replaced by Tracey Davis.

"Join who?" Fay looks up behind her thick glasses. Poor girl, she must have been left out as well. "Oh! That was you at the door, Parvati?" Okay. She's not such a poor girl, since she's the one leaving her self out. "I had no idea! I was just in the kitchen at the Leaky, looking about for some stuff to nibble on, and then everyone's all up in their arms, saying where's Parvati? Where's Parvati? And then Blaise rushes in with Tracey and they're also going Where's Parvati? Where's Parvati? That was silly."

Dennis gives her a long, sympathetic look. She blushes, he sighs and walks away.

Fay leans over to whisper in my ear. "I think he likes me." I swear, she probably tinkled herself.

"No," I reply flatly, "no, he's not honey."

Something's itching in the back of my mind. I can't grasp exactly what happened. Perhaps it was all a dream. I don't know.

"I say Katie Bell last night." I toss it out anyway, callously.

"Really? That's nice." Fay is giggling, "Who's that?"

"What?" I ask, incredulously. This is stupid. But somehow, really surreal. Fay Dunbar is the person who's supposed to know everyone, even though almost nobody knows her. "Katie Bell. You know. Quidditch chaser for Gryffindor's at Hogwarts."

"I thought Ginny was the Gryffindor Chaser." Hannah scratches her head.

What? I am staring at Hannah, but then again, Hannah was a Hufflepuff. But then again, she had been a Prefect. It was impossible for her know to know nearly everyone at school. Besides, we're talking about Katie Bell, here! Katie f***ing Bell!

"Before Ginny!" I groan. Perhaps's it's because of Ginny. Ginny eclipsed and totally blotting out anyone from recalling anyone else who played Quidditch? That's plausible.

"Dennis, help me out here."

"She must have been before my time," Dennis shrugs. Okay... I'm not sure. Did Katie graduate before or after Dennis came to Hogwarts?

"Neville?" I am bemused. Everyone's forgotten Katie Bell over Ginny Weasley. Figures!

But Neville stares at me with empty eyes.

"I'm sorry, Parvati," Neville looks sincerely confused. "Was she a friend of yours?"


	12. Chapter 12: Tracey Davis

Disclaimer: Harry Potter - JK Rowling. And I do not, shall not etc. profit from using these characters.

Summary: The aftermath of the worst day of her life begins now.

* * *

12. Some of us want to be forgotten

Katie Bell, Katie Bell. Why am I the only one who remembers Katie Bell?

Somehow they all believe that Ginny Weasley was the ball scoring person instead.

"Look, I am not quite up to my Quidditch, but I am certain that Ginny Weasley was not a ... Scorer."

Blaise buries his face in his hand. "Chaser, Parvati. Chaser."

"Parvati," Neville throws his arms up. "Ginny Weasley was the Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies. What other position would she fly?"

"Angelina, Alicia and Ginny," Fay chirps in, "Why else do you think we were the dominant team during the nineties?"

"Harry Potter?" I suggest, rolling my eyes.

"Well, we do have that," Neville is always the one to stand up for Harry, "but Ginny was as important as Harry. The two of them practically scored all the goals for the Gryffindor Team."

"Harry Potter," I am exasperated, "was absent for most of his Captaincy, Neville. Don't you remember?"

"Look," Blaise crosses his arms, "I played on the Slytherin team, okay? I was a Chaser, and I don't remember any Katie Bell."

"Parvati, honey," Hannah sounds tired. "we stayed up all night looking for you. Give it a rest with your imaginary friend, okay? You weren't ever interested in Quidditch. I have no idea why you're so preoccupied with this Katie Bell. Is that even a real name?"

I spend the rest of the morning, frantically trying to search for the tavern again. But my mind is a mist and I end up running up and down Knockturn Alley in filthy clothes like a mad woman.

* * *

I borrowed Hannah's robes and apparate home for a spare. Mother looks startled at my arrival, but accios a fresh set of robes from no where.

Mother is taking care of the toddler, and the two boys are running around the kitchen in circles. I think they're holding pieces of Roger's reports, as they have clearly watermarked Weasley's logo in the corner. Padma shoves a pile of fresh laundry into my arms and tells me to get useful for once in my life. She needs to prepare Roger's dinner.

I hear Roger's frustrating yelp from upstairs, and the twins scramble away into the basement. Even Padma looks agitated for a moment. Down from the basement, there comes a screech, as the twins had probably forced the door of Roger's Weasley Mustang. The doors have been coming loose lately. Mother takes the toddler and pushes it into Padma's arms, where she begins to soil Padma's apron.

I see Roger hurrying downstairs in a panic, throwing an annoyed glance at Padma, before disappearing into the basement screaming.

I suppose it was my misjudgment to come home expecting some peace and quiet. I take the baby from Padma's arms and place her in her baby chair. A slight pull of Padma's arms is enough to lead the shell shocked sister of mine into the empty shack outside. I shove a cigarette in her mouth, and she inhales deeply. Her eyes remain closed.

"You have no idea-" she begins.

"Start again," it's an old argument of ours. If we can't understand each other's problems, we agreed not to start throwing blame.

"Roger is getting a lot of pressure at work," Padma tries to sort out her problems. "the Ministry is pushing for a civilian level trade with the muggle world. He's been stressed out a lot."

"That's his problem," I shrug. I just want to get to Padma's inner demons, but she's always telling me about Roger this and Roger that.

"That not His Problem, dummy!" Padma snaps. "You wouldn't understand!"

"Start again," I shrug.

Padma inhales deeply, letting the savor of nicotine wash over her. "Roger's problems are my problems. I don't just simply exist apart from him, you idiot. He brings home the food, my part is raising the kids. We already have a house, and a fund set up for our kids. You're a dummy if you think that one day, you'll find the right man and settle down and expect to live happily ever after. It's all work. I know how you look down on me for settling early. But guess what, Parvati, the jokes on you once you realize that you should stop your bullshit and start worrying like the rest of us."

"I have my own worries," I light my own.

"What? About drinking yourself to oblivion?" Padma laughs hysterically. "Did they find you sprawled out on your own vomit in Knockturn Alley? You know how much Mother worries about you."

She's always like this. It's always about 'where are you in life? look at where I am!'.

"I keep telling Mother that you should have counted your blessings when Blaise Zabini asked you to marry him."

I turn to leave the shack, what used to be our own little hideout, when she grabs my arm.

"I'm worried about you, sweetie."

Am I being stubborn?

"You keep telling me that I won't understand your problems," Padma continues, relenting a bit, "but I perfectly understand. You really do need to settle down. It's different from what it looks like from the outside. You think that you can tell me that my life is a mess, and bring me out to the Shack to calm me down? I love it, Parvati. I love that I have little Angel's shit on my apron. I love that the twins who sometimes look like me, sometimes like Roger, act like they're somehow Fred and George reincarnate. They're my children, I smell them, I coddle them and nothing I would give to go back and imagine that I'm some sort of uppity Witch on the cover of Witches Weekly."

"I don't-"

"Yes, you do." Padma persists. "You fawn after Lavender, and you're jealous of Hermione. You think your one fling with Harry Potter entitles you to some elevated position. You think that Dumbledore's army was the high point of your life."

I cock my head. Is she crazy? "No! No, I don't! I really don't."

"Don't be stubborn, Parvati!" Padma wrings her hands exasperated. "Why else would you go off to Slughorn to try and become something you're not? It's okay to settle, sweetie! Look at me! Roger is a Vice President at Weasley's. We're going to go on a vacation to the South Pacific! I don't need to remind myself of how my life sucks compared to Hermione Granger. I have my kids and my husband. Besides, look where that's gotten Lavender! Look what happened to Pansy Parkinson! Look how completely forgettable Cho Chang has become!"

I love my sister. Her words are from her own heart, and I guess I'm a little saddened how perfectly she mirrors my own self. She is probably no different than I. But at least she has her family to help deal with her demons.

* * *

Not sure what I'm supposed to do, I wander around a bit before I decide to go back to Hogwarts. Returning to Knockturn Alley again before I have something tangible is definitely the last resort; first, I am powerless to overcome whatever had washed over me, and I don't think it was just the beer! Second, I really, really, really hate Knockturn Alley, and if it wasn't for Dennis I wouldn't have made that left turn. Besides, I have an OWL Charms class for fifth year Slytherins. Not something I take lightly.

House Slytherin had fallen on bad times since the Wizarding War. There is a veritable lack of students who are sorted there, since the Sorting hat almost never forces a student to a house he or she is consciously unwilling to join, always providing an alternative, House Slytherin now barely supports itself by a few students brave enough to remain. Some have suggested that House Slytherin be changed to House Snape. A few of the more respectable Slytherins, such as Theo and Blaise, had tried to voice independent opinions. Blaise went around asking the alumni to sign petitions, but ended up mostly being frustrated at the lack of participation. Of course, I signed his petition, too, but it mattered little. It was only until, surprisingly, Draco Malfoy entered the scene that it all settled down.

It had been his first public appearance since he graduated. Of course, he had been busy rebuilding his family fortune into the towering conglomerate of potioning wizardry that is now the Malfoy Potion and Charms, but he had never come out in public. There had been a lot of jeering from the public when he came to donate a sizable chunk to rebuild the Slytherin dungeon and to refurnish the Hogwarts Library. He also went so far as to set a commemorative statue of Professor Snape outside the Slytherin Dungeon, where he embraced Harry Potter in public. I am sure Harry attended one of his own rare public appearances for his strange fondness he had developed of Snape. Lav once speculated that Harry might actually be the illegitimate son of Snape; rubbish, I know, but that's the way of the gossip mill. Soon Draco had turned his public image to something of a repenting apostate, a prodigal son, a philanthropist. Some even argue that the public image of Malfoy P&C is better than Weasley's. Nevertheless, Slytherin still remains less attractive than most, and even now its ranks are often filled with the down trodden family of Death Eaters who nurture their young into becoming Neo Death Eaters.

Blaise once told me it was the curse of the Slytherins to be attracted to power. Power was, in his belief, something everyone sought, but only Slytherins claimed to seek in unabashed frankness. He's protective of his Slytherin roots, moreso than the lukewarm feeling I have for Gryffindor. What defines a person to join a House? I still cannot fathom what had brought me to Gryffindor. I am not brave; I am not adventurous; I am not proud and stubborn. Sometimes I suspect that the sorting hat simply sent me to somewhere other than Ravenclaw because I couldn't bear to be confused with Padma for the rest of my life.

In any case, Charms for Slytherins puts me on the edge of my seat. Slytherin, I am immediately flashed with an image of the noseless demon cackling in the ruins of our courtyard. Even after all these years, I still think about Slytherin as an unruly bunch of Neo Death Eaters mixed with Highborn snobs and an undercurrent of mistrust that I still can't shake despite having lived with non other than Mr. Highborn Snob, Blaise Zabini. It's my first class with this group, and I know I shouldn't go in with such apprehension, but I can't help it.

So, I am surprised when I walk into a rather mellow, calm atmosphere of dapper young fifth years. None of them have been selected for the Tri-Wizard competition, and hence their class had been generally pushed to after most of their peers who do have Tri Wizard contestants have fully mastered their own Charms classes.

The eyes follow me up to the pulpit, and they have all dutifully opened their books, looking up at me with what alarmingly seems to be the same apprehension that mirrors my own.

"Preparation for the OWLs requires you to master all of your previous training in Charms for the past five years, as well as basic Charms for fifth years that involves basic Concealment Charms."

I have long since abandoned opening classes with my favourite "what is the difference between Charms and Transfiguration". After a couple of classes teaching the upperclassmen it became uninteresting, and the students below the fourth year found it beyond their grasp.

"You'll find the list of previous studied charms in the syllabus I've handed out. These are the basic charms that have appeared most frequently in the OWLs for the past five years. I want you to learn them and practice them until you have achieved a success rate of at least seventy percent."

I hate myself for saying that. It takes out all the Magic from Magic. But Sprout specifically told me that class objectives should be the center of every student's study agenda, and she wanted nothing less than an average 64 points at the OWLs.

"The spells you do have to learn this year are the branch of Concealment charms involving mostly visual concealment, including transparency, and onwards to rudimentary spell concealment."

Half expecting to have been already greeted with a Malfoy to sneer at my introduction, my eyes flit this way and that at the congregation. They remain respective and calm, though somewhat aloof. Is this what Slytherin has become? I know I should be relieved, somewhat, but to see them this... this... Docile.

Later I am outdoors, a cup of coffee and five cigarette stubs in the ashtray. The autumn breeze is slender and delicious. Blaise has brought Tracey, and is sitting across me. I think he wants to finalize where he stands. He must have been unnerved the night I disappeared. Tracey probably put him up to this, but I understand where she's coming from, and she doesn't give off a vibe of ill will. We don't specifically talk about the mixed relationship that had be twist my ankle, but Tracey wants to clear any bad blood between ourselves.

"Docile," Tracey cocks her head to one side, "is pushing it. Blaise and I think that the new step for Slytherin is to clearly distance ourselves from the image that represents Voldemort. Times are changing, and we can't afford to always be the 'bad apple' of Hogwarts."

"Weeding out the weak," Blaise leds support to her opinion, like a neatly synchronized set of magical oscillators, "is putting it too bluntly. What the New Slytherin tries to put forth is putting it in a more positive spin. 'Fostering excellence', if you may say so."

"We actually look towards Slughorn as the new Paradigm," Tracey smiles, nodding at me as though she considers that I am Slughorn's protege. "In a decade, as the new Slytherin emerges from its lair, we will be the most well connected, socially advanced fraternity in the entire wizarding world. You want to access the high minds of the Ravennclaw? Want to get a stubborn Hufflepuff moving? Want another angle to join a venture with a Gryffindor? Slytherins will be there as the movers and shakers."

"That's what Draco is doing, lately," Blaise adds, "to create a social connection between all the different and fractured houses-"

Draco's name slaps me back from the surreal insanity that they are sputtering on about. "I thought you hated Draco."

"I don't hate, Draco," Blaise laughs uncomfortably, "I think we were just juvenile. We had our differences when we were young. But you can see he's become a new Draco. He's not the weird angst ridden creepy little prat he was when he was pissing in his PJs on how HP hurt his ego."

That was a bit too much detail, and I am certain Blaise is just smothering his continuing dislike of Draco Malfoy just to agree with Tracey in front of me.

"But we've both outgrown that, and we've come to understand the new role that Slytherin must take."

"When did this happen?" Just a few weeks ago he was so angry that I had compared him to Draco.

"Just a few days ago," Tracey smiles incredulously, as if I should know better, "Professor Slughorn and Draco threw a Slytherin get together for the new Slughorn Foundation. Didn't he tell you?"

Slughorn had been full on about how he was looking after Cho's missing husband. And I had thought that perhaps he was adding more of a personal touch to the lives of those around him for a moment. But this had come out of the blue. As having been the deputy general secretary of the Slug Club during my slave years, news that Slughorn had simply fished up a new Slug Club without telling me anything seemed too much of a shitty move so like him in nature that I am momentarily ashamed that I hadn't expected it.

I stare at the couple for a moment. Blaise, something of an ex fiance, chatting about how he repents his former dislike of the 'System' before me to his new girl. Tracey, throwing all the right jabs that are sure to stick like spears on the hide of hunted deer.

I suppose it's all come to this, and there is no one to blame but me. Inactivity on my part had festered my own state to grow into a putrid heap of passiveness.

I had denied the post war Glory that was sure to come to many of Dumbledore's Army in favor of living my own life than that of a foot note. A ride on which Michael Corner, Tony Goldstein and Neville Longbottom, to some extent, had taken to their current positions at Hogwarts.

I tried to chase my own dreams, to be different from Padma, ignoring Blaise, and endlessly persevering under the Slug, to end up more discarded than before. Blaise is with Tracey, denying his past which he not only shared with me, but also in my dreams of living apart from what defined us as Hogwarts students. Slughorn ditches his old fraternity he slaved me to maintain as soon as he smells money from the Malfoys. And my identical sister lives her life deep in the flow of things, presenting me always with a stark contrast to who I might have been: happily married, children of my own, a loving husband and no stormclouds over her head full of self-doubt and regret.

I look at the couple before me, wonder briefly for a moment if that's the vital thing I have been missing. You can often get lost from the ideas that you chase, but those that stand beside you are the constant of your life. I know Blaise too well to hate him. He is not cowarding out before me, he is not being a bastard to show me his new girl. I know that Blaise is giving me what I need, a good slap in the face to realize that I've been truly chasing windmills. What is tangible to him, and should have been tangible to me, the connection with another human being who will ride it out with you in storm or sunny sunshine is the only thing that you take with you in life. He is telling me that he has chosen Life.

Tracey is chatting excitedly of how she was going to ask Draco at their next meeting to support St. Mungo's chronic wasting curses department. Blaise momentarily ignores her and turns an eye toward me, intently with a mixture of sadness and steeled resolve.

'This is as far I would go with you on your journey, Parvati,' he seems to say.

I return a tender smile. I understand. I've made my decision myself.

You can't go on living like a teenager, or even like a twenty something, full of dreams and ideas all your life. Some day you will have to settle. It is never an easy path, and the difficulties of 'Reality' will eventually pull you down. Like Padma, who seemed to have swam headfirst towards settling down, as though she was eager to 'get ahead in life in everything', not even knowing where she was heading. And like many of my friends who eventually drifted to the bottom of the stream like sediment. I had let the caustic reality hurt me for so long. And I am grateful for Blaise, to give me this one final slap in the face to realize that it is time for me to make a choice.

Drift into the comfort of life, or go on living dangerously toward the uncertain future. It is not about mediocrity and genius. It is just about giving up or not.

And I am not spent. Not at all.

* * *

It is all a matter of seeing clearly.

Some days you will feel that you are at the bottom of the lowest of low. Some days, even despite what ever modicum of achievement you have reached, you will feel that your life has been wasted. It happens to the best of us. And it can happen to me.

I stand before the entrance to Knockturn Alley, dark even in the day time. It's random cobbled steps that irrationally dance to a lower street where buildings seem more crooked than what is sensible. I know I had not stumbled far down into the Alley. I had spent the best part of the morning searching, to no avail. Ordinarily, people would have given up, and normally it would be so easy to blame it on my intoxication.

I sense the truth; It doesn't want to be found.

I was not overwashed with emotion to have imagined a tavern appearing out of no where. And somewhere in these streets I had found a tavern where girls were faceless. Deep in my guts I feel it holds the key to where I am, and where I should be going. But most importantly, what happened to my friend, who seems to be threatening to become forgotten in the eyes of the wizarding world. I owe it to Lavender. And more importantly, I owe it to myself. One last attempt to see things that I believe in to the end.

I open my eyes and I see a doorway to the tavern I knocked upon last night, as though a disillusionment charm had been cast to mask what might have been apparent. I enter.


	13. Chapter 13: Parvati Patil

13 The girl with the Everlasting Boils

Aren't pubs supposed to have chairs up on the tables when the sun is still up?

I am greeted again by the cozy warm candlelight that is neither dark nor bright, and the huddled figures with their manes shrouding their impenetrable faces are as vague and indiscernible as ever. Trying to see who it is beneath the shadows gives me a headache. The bar tender is the cowled woman from the night before, and she seems surprised that I have entered unannounced.

She is more corporeal than the others, the dozen or so with their faces hidden, though her face, too, is masked in shadow. The difference is that she draws over her face a normal darkness, borne from the simple nature of deflected light. She looks at me through her shaded eyes, and her face seems somewhat familiar but all the while illusory.

My wand hand is fidgeting like a convulsing baby, and I try to calm my heart that is already pulsating so loud that I can hear my own heart beat.

She glides over to me like a wraith.

I suddenly find myself seated before her in one of the dingy alcoves, a beer and an ashtray before me. There is a headache threatening to burst an aneurysm in my head, and the disorienting shift of my position has left me gasping for air. I'm hyperventilating. I know this from my frequent bouts of anxiety.

"Yesterday," the woman speaks, "you came unannounced. I forgave you for your intrusion, because you were lost. It seemed you sought me, in a way that I would allow. Today is different, Parvati Patil."

_*crack*_

With a bare scraping of will at the bottom of my reserves, I bring myself back to control. The intoxication is leaving, and I feel a little bit fresher, as though I am waking from a severe addiction. Sweat trickles down thick and profuse. I curse a little, knowing that it was probably mottling my foundation makeup.

"I need to know," I try to say something, but nausea spreads about me again, and I find myself huffing and puffing like before.

_*crack*_

Before me I notice a few cigarette stubs have been put out. Time lapse?

No! My mind jolts into a frenzy. Memory charms. The woman has somehow put a memory charm on me, so deftly and precisely that it had taken out a chunk of my time. I look around and the windows no longer shine with sunlight.

I steel myself for another onslaught, silently casting defenses. But my mind is sluggish and it is difficult to find a coherent thought.

"I..."

_*crack*_

"You don't need to know that," she interrupts, testily.

Somehow, in the back of my mind, I feel that I have convinced myself partially that I really didn't need to know that. I am no slob. I am a practiced Occlumens. She couldn't have tampered with my mind without setting off a million alarms in my head. No, the chunk of lost time. During that time she somehow impregnated my mind with her idea. During that lost time she had partially convinced me away from what I was seeking.

What am I seeking? Damn! I see that the beer has already been half emptied. I had not only lost time, been convinced astray from my purpose, but she's also intoxicated me. Was this what had happened last night? Had I really become so drunk?

The realization hits me. If that is the case, it may be easier... less complicated. If the intoxication was merely my own doing, then all I have to do is defend myself against the assault on my memory.

I take a deep breath. Calling forth the deep reserves of my Will.

"Where is Katie Bell?" I begin.

This time I am able to fend off the assault. She shifts disconnected in her seat, as though someone had spliced my existence for a few seconds, but no more. I feel my conscious strain slightly unhinged, but nevertheless on course.

"Katie Bell's affair is her own," she replies evenly. At the end of her words, I notice that eyes about the room have turned to look at me. There are a dozen of them, scattered around the bar.

_*crack*_

And suddenly they are all rising from their seats. Momentary fear clutches my heart. They are terrifying.

Ghostly girls with fuzzy faces that seem to shift whenever I try to look at them. They are all skinny to the bone, as if the flesh is barely clinging to their bodies, dehydrated and brown.

_*crack*_

_*crack*_

There are now two empty pints before me, and my intoxication is heavy. The girls are now all gathered by my side, barely out of reach. I can't discern their faces, but I can sense one thing: Teeth. Sharp razor jaws that cover half their faces; I cannot see them but I know that they are there.

"Where is Cho Chang's husband?"

"Dead." the woman replies simply. "You are wasting out time asking all the wrong questions."

The darkness is what hits me, first, but the intoxication is the most notable assault.

It is dizzying, and immediately, before my eyes even attempt to get accustomed to the darkness, I am assaulted with drowsiness and stupor, as though I were filled to my cups.

_*Crack!*_

I feel an aura of protection fade from me. I came prepared, of course, but the magic here is thick. There is magic, and then there is Magic, and of course, there is MAGIC in the world. The kiddy sort of magic begins with tricks and manipulations. But as the magic grows and grows, spells require sacrifice. Quid Pro Quo, is the crux of all magic. And when that goes to far, people begin to sacrifice things that are not normally sacrificed for the sake of sanity, things like Blood, Essence, Sight, Love, Years of Life are given and taken away in return for supernatural power.

Right now, I had drawn upon every flimsy little trick in my book, as well as into a deep reservoir of my life force. The adept of Charms and the novice are leagues apart with a burden of immense knowledge and experience. Some of this I have tried to make up to in my apprenticeship under the Slug. But the Adept and the Master of Charms are separated by one single value, and that is the Will. It is the energy deep and hidden within the soul of the wielder, and believe me, I can be frightening when the moment calls for it.

I steel myself, for a moment. I feel shadows enclosing me, claustrophobic and obscuring the meager light that I have. I sip deep into my heart, feeling the throbbing of my soul, the sense of my sadness, years of heartbreak, until, in my mind, I grasp a broken heart bleeding tears, or crying blood. It pulsates, a potent little form of me, caustic and burning, and it smells like dew mist on the rain. For a brief moment my surroundings darken. I feel cold clammy hands grasp me, corporeal and biting. They dig into my flesh, and I feel that they are rending my new robes. I feel sharp fingernails press into mt skin, breaking and bleeding. Pain shoots from everywhere. The hands that grasp me are cold, bony, with long wooden fingers, numbering in the hundreds from a dozen set of hands.

_*Crack!*_

I scream, and my scream rings only in my ears like a drowning woman, submerged.

I feel the darkness, akin to last night, envelop me.

The woman is scornful.

What is the right Question?

The right question to ask a person who's weapon is memory. The woman who will make people disappear. Why did they disappear? My mind races.

The other night she told me that I had sought her out. Today she tells me that the manner I sought her today was different. What happened yesterday? I had been shamed. I had been shamed beyond everything, and I had lost myself.

I wanted to disappear, I wanted to be forgotten. Not today. Today I came to settle a score.

She is a woman who can let people disappear. That is her power, and somehow she had made Katie Bell disappear. I have no idea what Katie has to do with anything, but I am sure there was a person named Katie Bell who was erased from everyone's memory.

**_*Cra-_**

No!

I momentarily disrupt the wave of nausea that threatens to envelop me. I reach in, deep inside to my inner most power. I touch upon the symbols of my being, images that make the most potent and rawest part of me.

The Tiger! The Nandi! **The Lion**! The three eyes of the Goddess, Parvati. The left hand of Contempt, Tarjani, the enchantment, Kataka. My hand gestures bring me strength.

It has been a long time since I touched upon that part of my soul. Buried deep within the heart and heartbreak, I find the potent thing that distinguished me from Padma, the thing the Sorting hat smelled and thought was bravery. Something I had tempered over the years, wanting to become a socialite, wanting to become a scholar. Something that is central to my character, yet never graced upon because of my somewhat timid appearance. It is an anger, of boiling fury. I am Devi Durga, destroyer of all fear.

_**"Om Bhagawateh Parvate Namah!"** _I hear myself scream my most potent defensive mantra, though what I hear is a near inhuman voice, it booms from my throat yet sounds otherwordly, demonic and powerful.

My incantation brings forth a well of sustenance, and I find myself regaining my strength; my mind is snapped forcibly into clarity as though a bent piece of metal is straightened, rust falling from its damaged surfaces to shed away and show a sheen of brilliance.

I am the fury, I tell myself. The animus of discontent, the ever drifting soul that never rests. That is the curse to which I have shied away from all attachments. No, I do not forget, nor wish to be forgotten. If there is one thing that I am, it is the terrible scorn of the woman forgotten.

The fury of my being lights the room, and I feel my head reeling back into reality, as though I had shot up from the water to gasp a breath of air.

In a flash of a moment I have spurned the clawing hands from my body, whipped out my wand.

"Protego!"

The shield charm is simply, and I could have easily shrouded myself with simply a thought. But enhanced with my wand, and resonated with my voice, it blasts those that surround me far across the room. The power of my charm blasts the hood off the woman, as well.

She is a complete stranger. Her face is covered in blots and pustules. Half her face is clawed and burnt, half her face is scaly like a serpent, with the color of ash. Her eyes, though, are blistering green and bright, she glares at me with something of deep hatred that drips like poisoned honey.

Around me, the faceless mass briefly flash a face of some semblance of girls before they rapidly resume their shrouded identity. But at least they are wary of me and stay away. I find that my new robes had again become clawed and torn. So, that's what happened. _They literally shredded me last night! _

"F***!" I scream at them. "Do you know how much designer robes cost?"

My anger is livid and my charm pulsates madly as I take my pocket mirror out of my purse to check my make up. My mascara is running! It will be the end of me if I show up back at Hogwarts, or even the Leaky, like this!

"Alright, sister." I snap my mirror back into my purse. "Who the hell are you?"

"Try to guess my name." the woman spits back at me, unimpressed.

"I've never seen you before in my life!" I am up to my neck with this bitch. "Stop playing games. What is gong on?"

"Don't you see?" the woman sneers, and the sneer cracks a pustule on her face as it oozes down her side.

"You really should see a dermatologist," I wince.

"You really don't know me, do you?" she snorts. "Do you know that I was once a member of Dumbledore's Army?"

I smack my lips. Damn Dumbledore's Army. It's brought me more pain than anything else. It's constantly nipping at my heels, like a stigma. Dumbledore's Army, my ass.

"If you're upset about your missing invitation to the VIP box, you'll have to take it up with someone important. I dunno, Ginny Weasley or Hermione Granger. FYI, I didn't find my invite yet, either."

One of the faceless girls try to approach me and I fling her across the room.

"Don't temp me, ladies." I snap at them. "I am a f***ing Hogwarts Professor of Charms. Do not F*** with me."

"Proud are you?" the ugly bitch sneers.

"Not as proud as when I'll call in the Aurors to your little creep fest."

"Oh, I swear you won't be able to call in anyone, Parvati Patil," the woman laughs - you know, wickedly. It takes every fiber of my being to stop myself from rolling my eyes. I barely have enough Willpower to fend off another attack, and bravado will only help me so far.

"Who are you?" I start to feel the desperation creep in again.

"Do you know all these girls came to me of their own free will?" She asks. "I have committed no crime, but merely allowed them their relief. These girls asked me to have themselves forgotten. Forgotten from the likes of Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore. Forgotten from the minds and the records. It takes a lot of gold for my services, but gold is not the entrance fee. I thought you might need my services, and I would have let you in on a discount."

These girls. These faces that I still can't seem to penetrate. They came here, asking to be released of the world. And this woman, this nameless woman had somehow achieved that in such a penetrating and pervasive manner that I am only led to one conclusion of this situation.

I have to flee. She is too powerful, and I am barely hanging on to my most inner power, draining fast.

"Even if you remember anything, which I doubt you will, I have done nothing wrong." Her voice is without play, sincere and from the heart. "It is the World that betrayed us. It is the World that thought it could discard us like so many used rags. It raised its champions to their high perches, and it steam rolled over the lot of us. Tell me, you don't know what I'm talking about. I dare you."

_*Crack!*_

I am backing out the door. The girls are slowly gathering their strength again. They walk towards me warily. For a moment I glimpse Katie Bell's face before she dissolves into an unrecognizable mess.

My wand is drawn and pointing at them.

"I will remember." I call out. "And I'm going to end this."

"You are one of us, Parvati Patil," the woman calls out. "You cannot win. Everyone is against you. The World is against you. The System is against you. You will drift back into obscurity. And I will be waiting for you. We will all be waiting for you."

_*Crack!*_

"I am going to find out who you are," I cry out as I reach the door. My hands are fumbling to open it. There is a latch holding the door in place.

"Oh, I can tell you who I am," the woman laughs. Is she trying to stall me?

_*Crack!*_

The faceless girls are already upon me again. But at least I'm not getting any more intoxicated.

"Protego!"

The bitch is trying to stall me.

My hands fumble and I've opened the locks. I feel too weak to cast another shield spell. The nearest faceless girl has a knife out and is stabbing at me. **Huh? **Yes, she stabbed at my robe, and I feel the blade pierce my skin. Not deep , but it hurts like hell.

"What is your problem?" I shriek. I kick her in the face and she goes sprawling.

"I can tell you my name," the woman is still at the far end of the room, in a sing song voice.

"F*** you, bitch!" I shriek back. I punch a couple of more faceless women in their faceless-ness. I am able to swing the door open, knocking a few others back. Despite their numbers and their viciousness, they are scrawny little things, and they fall away.

Before the door closes behind me, I hear her cackling madly. Crazy ass Bitch.


End file.
